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Chapter Text

Detective Angela Lopez and Officer Jackson West were both aware that they probably had more important things to do with their morning, but they couldn’t help themselves. All they could do was stir creamer into their coffees and watch the scene before them unfold. 

Their trance caught Nyla’s attention as she was headed into the briefing room for roll call a few minutes early, but stopped when she saw the laser-focused befuddlement on Angela and Jackson’s faces.

“Good morning?” she greeted.

Angela didn’t greet her back, instead staring straight ahead and musing, “Do you ever watch something happen… and you know it’s happening… but you’re amazed at how impossibly slow it’s happening?”

Rather than answer, Nyla turned to Jackson and asked, “Is she okay?”

In response, Jackson tipped his chin towards the other side of the room, and Nyla finally turned. 

The scene in question was of Tim Bradford sitting on a briefing room table with his arms crossed watching Lucy Chen show him a half-assed rendition of a TikTok dance her teenage roommate Tamara had taught her over the weekend. She paused only to laugh when Tim’s attempts not to laugh at her failed him. 

“Ah,” Nyla said, nodding. 

“Morning, everybody!” They all turned to see Nolan approaching with two cups of coffee. Handing one to Nyla, he looked through the glass window to see what had everyone whispering. “They are aware that the walls of the briefing room are see-through, correct?”

“Maybe they’ll get together at Jack’s wedding,” Angela sighed. 

“Or when flying cars are invented,” Jackson said.

“Isn’t he supposed to have a girlfriend?” Nyla asked, and Angela shook her head. 

“Broke up,” she explained. “Tim said things were never quite the same after that double date and they just drifted until they couldn’t salvage it.”

“Wonder why,” Jackson mumbled from behind his coffee cup.

Nyla rolled her eyes. “Why are you all in their business anyway?” she asked. “It’s more fun to just sit back and watch the mess unfold in its own time.”

“Nyla, all due respect, you don’t live with half the mess.”

“Trust me,” Nolan interjected, “It might be fun when you’re mostly an onlooker but any time spent with either of these two is…”

The briefing room started to fill with fellow officers awaiting roll, and neither Tim nor Lucy even bothered to look at any of them. 

“Exhausting,” Angela finished. 

“Mildly concerning,” Jackson followed.

“Last I remember, roll call tends to take place inside the briefing room.” The group hadn’t even heard Grey coming, so they had no time to stop looking into the room so obviously. Grey joined the observation of Tim, no longer watching Lucy dance, but now swiping through his phone and from the faces Lucy was making at it, they all assumed he was showcasing his newest collection of Kojo pictures. “Are you all standing around gossiping about your fellow officers?”

“Never,” Jackson lied.

Grey shot him a look that could only be read as “You wanna try that again?”

“We’re gossipping about my roommate!”

“And my Man of Honor!” Angela added. “It’s not gossiping when you’re talking about your best friends.”

“Mmhm,” Grey groaned. “And you don’t think they’ll notice their closest friends blatantly watching them through glass?”

Nolan stopped drinking his coffee to offer, “Sir, 20 bucks says they don’t look away from each other until at least two minutes after roll is supposed to start.”

“What is the hold up here?” Angela sighed. “Wesley and I met, dated, got engaged, got married, and had a baby in the time it took these two to at least start flirting in public.”

“Yeah, well, Wesley was never your boss,” Nyla countered.

“Yeah, but there’s paperwork for that,” Grey added, causing the group to look over at him. “Not that I have a position on this one way or another.”

“Bradford is a strict, by-the-book professional,” Nyla continued. “He’ll never let himself think of Lucy in that way while he’s only seeing her in uniform for 12 hours a day.”

“Well, he could just ask her out on a date then,” Nolan attempted to reason.

Nyla stared at Nolan like he’d just said the sky was purple. “Because I respect you, I’ll give you the chance to realize the flaw in your logic.”

“I realize it, thank you.”

“So, what?” Jackson asked, finishing the last of his coffee. “We make them hang out outside of work? How do we force two people to go on a date?”

“Oh, no… you don’t,” Nyla answered, shaking her head. “Bradford and Chen on a date that they know is a date? At this point, it would be the most awkward thing in the world. Even if one of them did ask the other, they’re so used to being friends and colleagues, they’d probably say 15 words to each other total if they went into it knowingly romantically.”

Nolan quirked an eyebrow. “You know, for a passive onlooker, you sure have analyzed this a lot.”

“No one asked you.”

“Ugh!” Angela groaned in exasperation. “So this is just doomed then? They’ve friend-zoned each other eternally? How do we get them out of their comfort zones and still have it end well?”

They all individually pondered the question. Even Grey could be caught rubbing his chin in thought.

“We don’t,” Nolan finally broke the silence by saying. “We don’t! We keep them in their comfort zones while still getting them more used to each other off the clock!”

Jackson squinted. “I’m not following.”

Nyla’s eyes widened in understanding. “We trick them into going out.”

“Yes!” Nolan agreed, pointing. “They do something together in their downtime as friends! Maybe if we can get them far enough from their titles and just show them how close of friends they really are, they’ll realize they want to be more!”

“We plan it ourselves!” Jackson added, finally catching onto the plan. “Oh, we should send them to a museum. Lucy loves museums and she knows enough interesting factoids to keep the conversation going for hours.”

“Yeah, Tim isn’t gonna be here for that,” Angela said. “He’s gonna wanna do something outdoorsy, like hiking, or something sports-related. Hell, he might settle for beer and a movie on his couch.”

“What’s something they both like?” Nolan asked, earning a shrug from Angela and Jackson. “Well, they both like food, so maybe we send them somewhere with the kind of food they like, but somewhere they haven’t eaten? So it doesn’t just feel like a lunch break on shift?”

It was then that they noticed Nyla chuckling to herself about their musings. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, clearing her throat. “It’s just cute how you guys think these two will realize they’re into each other after one outing. Really, it’s adorable.”

Jackson narrowed his eyes before turning to Angela. “My museum idea will go a lot better than your hiking idea.”

“Care to put money on it?” Angela asked. 

“Oh, yeah, one date won’t work, so two will definitely do the trick,” Nyla added.

“We all plan one,” Nolan declared. “That’s four chances for one of us to be the one to end months and months of… whatever this is.”

“Is there still money involved?” Angela asked. “I’m a good matchmaker and Jack needs one of those fancy strollers.”

“Winner gets $50 each from the losers, sound fair?” 

All except Grey nodded at Nolan’s proposition. 

“We’ll take turns. Who wants to go first?” Angela looked around the group for a taker.

“I can,” Nolan offered. “Bailey’s been asking me to take her on a crime-free date, so we can figure out some kind of romantic/fake platonic situation.”

“Wait, isn’t there an unfair advantage for the first few?” Nyla asked. “If your date wins, we owe you money, and we didn’t even get a chance.”

“True,” Jackson agreed. “But dates after are gonna have the leftover effects of the dates that came before. You said yourself that the first date isn’t gonna do it, right? The fairness evens out.”

“Honestly, I’d say I deserve a bonus if my date wins.”

“You’re not getting a bonus, Nolan.”

“Wait, wait, so you’re telling me there’s a four out of five chance I’d be out 50 bucks?” Grey interjected, and everyone looked at him again. “What? There’s money involved, of course I’m considering.”

Nolan grinned, happy to add another player. “And a one in five chance of winning $200! Plus, a 100% chance of helping two good friends!”

Nyla stuck a finger in the air, adding, “Unless this goes terribly wrong and ends in both of them hating us and each other forever.”

“An 85% chance of helping two good friends!” Nolan corrected. “Come on, sir, wouldn’t this be a great story to tell at a wedding one day?”

“Oh, they’re never finding out about this,” Angela countered.

Nolan corrected again, “Wouldn’t this be a great story to tell at a wedding behind the bride and groom’s backs one day?”

The group stared at Grey expectantly until he uncrossed his arms to put his hands up. “Fine! I’ll join your dumbass plan. Now, can we please start roll call before LA burns to the ground?”

Chapter Text

Nolan wasn’t worried. In fact, he might have felt a little dirty if they had offered him a bonus for winning because this would be almost too easy. There was no dispute that amongst his colleagues, he was the romantic. It had gotten him into trouble at times, but for once, it was about to come in handy. The bet was about to end only a week after establishment and Nolan was going to get bragging rights, $200, a lovely night with his girlfriend, and the inner satisfaction of his friends finally being on the path to happiness. 

He waited all day for a chance to talk to Lucy alone and finally got it when he found her doing paperwork near the holding cells. She looked up when she heard him coming and greeted him with a nod.

“Hey!” he greeted back. “What are you doing tonight?”

She looked up in thought for a moment. “Nothing, I think I’m free.”

“There’s a carnival in town, and Bailey and I have two extra tickets. Interested?”

He knew the answer before she started bouncing on her toes. “Oo! Oo, that sounds fun, yes, please! Do I have to bring a plus one?”

“You should, but it doesn’t have to be a date. It can be a friend or a coworker, even, just anyone you think you’d have a good time with.” He stopped himself before he could single-handedly blow the gag order to bits. 

She tapped her pen, thinking. “Jackson?”

He shook his head. “Plans tonight. He mentioned them this morning.” He made a mental note to text Jackson to make up fake plans for tonight. 

“I mean, I… I don’t really know anyone else who’d wanna go.”

Nolan figured Lucy wouldn’t figure out the whole scheme due to one gentle nudge. “Why don’t you see if Tim is doing anything?”

The lack of surprise in Lucy’s face at his suggestion let him know he was not the first to put that idea in her head. She quickly shook it off, tapping her pen again. “Tim? A carnival? No way, he’d hate that. Too many lights, too much noise, it’s all very un-Tim.”

“I mean, you don’t know unless you try, right?” She looked up at him and he could see how unconvincing his encouragement was. “He wouldn’t be mad about just being asked, that’s for sure.”

Lucy pursed her lips and tapped her pen faster. “What the hell? The worst he can say is no, right?”

Lucy took out her phone, already feeling her heart rate pick up. She knew Tim wasn’t averse to seeing her off the clock, but asking him to a carnival felt like setting herself up for failure. 

As the line rang twice, Lucy considered hanging up, calling it a butt dial if he asked about it, but he picked up on the third ring before she could decide. “Chen? You okay?” 

Lucy could hear the street roll by as he drove his shop, as well as the sound of her nervously drumming her fingers on the desk. “Um, hey! Are you doing anything tonight?”

“Uh, don’t think so, why?”

“Would you wanna come to a carnival with me, Nolan, and Bailey?” she blurted it out before she could think herself out of it.

She briefly wished she had when he was silent on the other end. “A carnival?” he repeated. “Like, with the lights and the noise?”

Lucy turned around to annoyedly mouth “ Told you!” at Nolan before returning to her conversation. “Yeah, no, it’s dumb, I just… I wanted to go and I didn’t wanna go and just third-wheel, so…” 

He sighed on the other line, surprising her because that was his “I’m halfway into letting Lucy talk me into something” sigh. “What’s in it for me?” he asked. 

“A night of fun and friendship?”

She was met with silence again. 

“I'll work an entire shift with no AC in the shop.”

“And how does that benefit me?”

“It doesn't, but you’ll get to know I'm in extreme discomfort all day.”

He sighed again, and Lucy knew she had him. “Deal.”

She smiled to herself in victory. “Great! I’ll see you tonight then.” She brought her phone down to hang up before stopping and putting it back to her ear again. “Hey, Tim?”

“Yeah?”

“My car’s in the shop. Forgot to mention that.”

“I’ll pick you up at six.”

At 6:07, Tim had half a mind to go up to Lucy’s apartment and get her himself, but when he saw a yellow sundress making its way through the apartment building door, he stopped. The one thing Lucy reminded him of time and time again was that she knew how to dress. 

“Sorry,” she said upon reaching him, “I was looking for the right shoes.”

He looked down to see her white strappy wedges with toes painted the same yellow as her dress. “Aren’t your feet gonna hurt walking around all night in those?”

“These? No, my feet only hurt when I wear stilettos.”

Tim playfully rolled his eyes and opened his passenger side door to let her in. 

The car ride was easy, spent cracking jokes and listening to Lucy sing along to the radio extremely off-key, which was funny because, among other reasons, he knew for a fact she was an alarmingly good singer when she tried. 

They carried on like that until Lucy’s phone went off at a red light. He automatically looked over and saw it was a notification from a name he recognized as a dating app. He didn’t know why the idea of Lucy on a dating app was so weird to him. Was she paying to be matched? Was she swiping for free? Tim always thought dating websites to be a waste of time, but if he ever did as a last resort, he’d at least invest in a good one. Did she feel the same way?

“You know, I’m sure someone on there would’ve loved to take you to the carnival tonight.”

She checked the notification once before putting her phone back in her lap face down. “Probably.”

“So why didn’t you ask one of them? Or some other contender with an open Friday night?”

She sighed, looking out the window. “Honestly, I’ve kinda learned my lesson about double dates. Especially with established couples.” He looked at her for elaboration, so she continued, “The last double date I went on was with Chris, and he did not have a good time, so I’d rather not repeat that.”

Tim chuckled at the memory of Chris awkwardly trying to chip in to the conversation to no avail. “Well, in that case, maybe double dates don’t work well for established couples either because Ashley didn’t have a great time that night either.”

“Yeah, I remember. Sorry about that, by the way. About her, I mean.” Tim nodded in acknowledgment but didn’t respond. “Maybe that night was just a bust in general because we seemed to be the only ones having a good time.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” he agreed. “So what ever happened between you two, anyway?”

“Me and Chris? Pff, nothing really? We had a couple dates, but we saw each other around the station too much and things just got awkward. Nothing popped off, I guess; we just kinda stopped talking.” 

Tim nodded, surprised, but not particularly disappointed. “Hm.”

“Anyway, yeah, I just preferred to bring a friend over an actual date. You should take notes.”

He knitted his eyebrows together. “So you’re saying I should establish a go-to ‘not a date’ person?”

Lucy looked up in thought. “Actually, I’ll tell you at the end of the night if that’s a good idea or not.”

He shook his head with a smile. “Sounds good to me.”

Lucy knew inviting Tim was the right call when they arrived at the carnival. Nolan and Bailey had arrived first, so Bailey was perched in Nolan’s lap when their friends walked up, and suddenly Lucy was grateful she didn’t feel the pressure to match the other couple’s public affection as if this were a real double date. 

“Hey!” Bailey called when she saw Lucy, sliding off Nolan’s lap to wrap her in a friendly hug as Tim and Nolan gave each other a nod. “I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever.”

“That’s because you haven’t!” Lucy replied. “Couldn’t pass up carnival night, though!”

Nolan piped in, “I am determined to give this woman a date that doesn’t end in crimes or fights or ghosts from the past or anything. Just a night of fun for everyone involved.”
“But you’re still here, so there’s only so much fun she can have,” Tim teased, earning a nudge from Lucy. “What? I’m joking!”

“We aren’t on duty, so technically, I can deliver any comebacks without getting in trouble.”

Bailey tugged Lucy toward the ticket booth, but Lucy couldn’t help but watch Tim and Nolan’s ribbing as they slowly made their way behind. She was always vaguely aware that those two could be friends outside of work, but it was nice to see it in reality. It also reminded her how long it had been since she saw off-duty Tim. The Tim that walks with his hands in his pockets and smiles with his entire face. Guard never all the way down, partly due to his cop experience, partly because that was just Tim as a person, but down enough that she felt like she could make a joke and he’d laugh as hard as he truly wanted to. As Bailey handed in the four tickets and took Lucy inside, all she could do was observe this version of Tim while she could. It was a good version. 

“Oh my god!” Bailey exclaimed, startling Lucy out of her thoughts. “Look how beautiful that Ferris wheel is!”

Lucy looked ahead to the back of the carnival where she could better survey the giant Ferris wheel she’d glimpsed on the way in. The sun hadn’t gone all the way down, but they had already turned the lights on, and Lucy was mesmerized by the blue, green, and purple rotations. 

“John, we have to do the Ferris wheel a couple times while we’re here!”

“Woah, no, thank you!” Nolan replied. “Heights and I are not friends.”

“I’ll ride with you,” Lucy offered. “I’d love to catch the view from up there!”

“Lucy, that is a 50 foot wheel that got here in a suitcase,” Tim piped in from behind her. “It’s a death trap.”

“You’re a cop,” Bailey shot back. “You might as well do one death trap for fun.”

“Not a selling point, babe!” Nolan called.

The four walked through the carnival together, awkwardly bumping into each other to avoid the crowds. As they passed through long lines at the food carts, Lucy was acutely aware of Tim’s hand on her back, warm through the fabric of her dress, guiding her so he didn’t lose her. She glanced up to see him staring straight ahead completely neutrally as he walked, nothing on his face betraying that the prolonged touch was affecting him at all. 

“Bet I can beat you at that,” Bailey declared to Nolan, pointing to their right. Lucy and Tim looked over to where she was pointing to see two people shooting bean bags at metal ducks. 

“Bailey, I’m a cop,” he replied.

“A cop who failed his first evaluation,” Tim muttered, causing Lucy to snort.

“I saw a guy in scuba gear that ended up being connected to a much bigger case-” Nolan stopped himself, breathing away the urge to tell that story for the hundredth time. “Now I kinda have to, if only to prove to these two that I can beat a firefighter at shooting.”

Bailey laughed and dragged him over to the booth, Tim and Lucy following closely behind, his hand remaining on her back through the much thinner crowd. 

Nolan paid the operator and the couple were handed their guns.

Tim leaned down, inches from Lucy’s ear to whisper, “My money’s on Bailey.”

Keeping herself focused and completely disregarding the feeling of his breath on her cheek, Lucy replied, “You’re on.”

Nolan won. Easily. Not only did he beat Bailey, which to her credit, she held her own for a firefighter, but he only missed one duck, affording him a prize from the top shelf. Bailey pointed to a giant stuffed giraffe that the operator then retrieved for her. Once in Bailey’s arms, Nolan had to help her get a good hold on it, seeing that it was the size of the entire top half of her body. “I’m gonna name it Zeke,” Bailey declared.

“My turn!” Lucy exclaimed, looking around at the various carnival games. “I’m gonna go try the ring toss!”

The group followed her over to the booth she’d spotted and she paid for her rings. “You got ten chances to throw the rings onto the necks of the milk bottles. Four gets you bottom shelf, six gets you middle, eight gets your pick from the top.”

“I got this,” Lucy muttered to herself, getting in position. She stopped when she saw Tim in her periphery, watching her with his arms crossed and a smirk on his face. “Don’t try anything.”

“Me? Never.”

Refusing to let his look get in her head, she got back into position. She took a deep breath, threw her ring…

… and missed. 

“Huh,” she huffed, shaking her arm out. “Let me try again.”

She missed again. 

After her third miss, she reminded herself that the middle shelf wasn’t that bad. 

After her fifth miss, she noticed a really cute keychain on the bottom shelf she could give Tamara. 

When she only had two rings left, she finally got outwardly annoyed. “Ugh!” she shouted, tapping her ring on the booth counter. “This game is rigged!”

“Probably,” Tim agreed, uncrossing his arms and stepping closer. “Mind if I help?”

Lucy was too embarrassed to turn down the offer after eight misses, but she didn’t think through what accepting his help would entail. He walked behind her, putting one hand on her left shoulder and gently wrapping the other around her right wrist. “You’re throwing too hard. And you’re doing it overhand, you should try under.” He used his right hand to flip hers palm up. Lucy hoped he couldn’t feel her pulse increasing in her wrist as he crouched forward, lining his perspective up with hers. “Deep breath,” he ordered, and she took one.

Ring toss, Lucy, she thought. Focus on the ring toss. 

She felt his hand swing hers forward and at the peak, she let the ring go and heard the clink of it landing around the neck of a bottle. 

“Ah!” Lucy cheered, spinning out of his hold and turning to him. “Oh my god, we did it!” 

She offered her hand for a high five and he accepted with a shake of his head and a grin.

“Alright, you got one left,” he said, stepping backward to give her room. “Remember, deep breath.”

She nodded before turning back to the booth. She shook her arms out and bounced on her feet before getting back into position. Deep breath, she thought in Tim’s voice. She closed her eyes, giving her arm a few practice swings to remember the exact force of his arm guiding her. 

“You got this!” she heard Nolan cheer behind her, followed by an aggressive “ SHH!” from Tim.

Once she was pretty sure she got it right, she opened her eyes and tossed her last ring, watching it land perfectly over the neck of the next bottle. 

“YES!” She looked back to see Nolan and Bailey clapping for her. But her focus was on Tim, who clapped with them as he smiled like she’d scored on all ten bottles. 

“Not bad,” he said, with much more enthusiasm in his voice than his words entailed. 

“Thank you,” she replied with a mock curtsy. “Now your turn.”

“Oh, no, I’m good. I’ll let you guys enjoy the rigged carnival games, thank you.”

“C’mon, Tim,” Bailey encouraged. “You might end up scoring a giant giraffe like we did.”

“Or nothing like Lucy did.”

“Hey!” Lucy protested, flicking his arm. 

“Didn’t you say you liked basketball?” Nolan asked. “I think I saw a basketball game at the front.”

Lucy tried to telepathically thank Nolan a million times because she knew the one thing Tim Bradford could never turn down was a basketball challenge. And from the look on his face, he was a bit jolted that his secret weakness had been exploited. 

They made their way to the small basketball court and watched the person in front of them play. 

“See how he’s having a hard time dribbling?” Tim said, leaning back into Lucy’s space. “That’s because they leave the balls flat.” 

The guy threw the ball as hard as he could to no avail, and Lucy watched it bounce off the net.

“And the rim is bent,” Tim explained. 

“So what are you gonna do?” Lucy asked, turning to him so she could see the wheels turning in his head. 

With squinted eyes, he answered, “I don’t know. I’ll have to feel the ball to figure it out.”

Finally, the guy in front of them missed one last time and it was Tim’s turn. He made his way around Lucy into the small court, handing the operator a $5 bill as he walked in. 

Lucy stood back to watch as Tim got a ball and positioned himself in front of the net. His eyebrows furrowed in dismay as he bounced the ball to feel the flatness. Finally, he threw the first ball and missed. Had it been anyone else, she would’ve shouted encouragement, but she knew Tim needed absolute silence. He took a deep breath, threw the next ball, and watched it bounce off the rim. The next ball he took, she could see him analyzing the situation. The weight of the ball, the bent rim, the way the court was set up- the entire thought process was written in his face. 

He threw the ball, and it landed in the hoop with a satisfying swish.

“YES!” Lucy cheered, putting her hand over her mouth immediately after.

Tim looked back at her with mock annoyance, but the smile he was fighting betrayed him. 

Once he’d figured out his rhythm, it was mostly a breeze for him, and out of twelve shots, scoring nine afforded him a top-shelf prize. Lucy saw the pride in his walk as he made his way over to choose, deciding on a small stuffed koala from the middle shelf Lucy thought looked criminally soft. 

He held the koala up for her to see as he approached, holding it away from her when she reached for it. “Ah, ah, ah, my prize.”

Lucy rolled her eyes and withdrew her arms. “What are you gonna name it?”

“Chlamydia.”

“Tim.”

He laughed at her indignation as the group began walking again. “It doesn’t need a name, it’s gonna be a chew toy for your dog by the end of the night anyway.”

“What?! No!” she protested. “It’s- it’s so cute! And it looks so soft!”

“Which is exactly why he’ll love it.”

Lucy shook her head and mentally began mourning the koala. “Well, he should at least have a name before meeting his doom. I like Osborn.”

“‘Osborn’?”

“Bailey, have I yet told you how beautiful you look under carnival lights?” Nolan said, interrupting their conversation. 

“Oh my god, stop,” Bailey replied, blushing and covering her face.

“It’s true. You’re so beautiful, the colors look so pretty around you.”

“You’re being way too sweet.”

And then they were kissing. And not a quick kiss, but a deep kiss that should probably be done privately. The kind of kiss that makes any company you’re with deeply uncomfortable. 

“You hungry?” Tim asked, and Lucy could hear the discomfort in his voice as well. “I think I saw soft pretzels on the way in here.”

“Pretzels sound good,” she replied as they both started taking steps backward, away from the couple who was too stuck in their moment to even notice they were leaving. 

Seconds later, Bailey broke the kiss. “John? They’re gone.”

Nolan turned away from her and looked around, verifying with a nod. “Told you that would work.”

“So what do we do now?”

“Now we go do what we want and wait for the magic.” He took her hand and led her toward the crowd. “I think I saw a caricature artist somewhere!”

For such a packed night at the carnival, the pretzel line was fairly short, so Tim and Lucy made their way to the front quickly.

“What can I get for you?” the vendor asked. 

“The pretzels look pretty big; do you wanna just split one?” Lucy asked Tim behind his shoulder.

He nodded as he turned to her. “Classic?”

She shook her head. “Too salty. Can we get cinnamon sugar?”

“Too sweet.”

They looked at each other for a moment before looking back to the vendor and simultaneously ordering, “Pizza.”

Their pizza pretzel was ready in no time and after Tim paid, Lucy’s prize for winning their shooting game bet, the vendor handed it to him and they walked away from the stand.

“Wait, wait!” Lucy cried as Tim was about to take the first bite. “Don’t get pizza grease on Osborn!”

He rolled his eyes but loosened his arm’s grip to give her room to take it. Lucy realized she was right about the stuffed animal’s softness and she just wanted to take it home and use it as a pillow. She assumed she might sleep all day on something this soft, and the residual warmth from Tim’s arm added to the pleasure. 

“Are you done hugging the koala yet or am I eating this pretzel alone?”

“Shut up,” she said, leaning over so he could put the corner of the pretzel near her mouth. 

They took turns biting the pretzel until they came back to the spot they’d left Nolan and Bailey, only for them to be nowhere in sight. 

“Where’d they go?” Lucy asked.

“I mean, I didn’t expect them to stay in one spot, but….” Tim turned fully around to confirm they were gone. “I thought they’d at least stay closeby.”

“Let me call him.” She pulled up Nolan’s contact to call, but after four rings, she was sent to voicemail. “Maybe they’re on a ride or something.”

“How do we find them?” 

Lucy turned her gaze to the one thing she knew Tim had his heart set on avoiding tonight.

“No,” he declared after seeing where she was looking. “Nope.”

“It’s the best way to get a full view of the carnival.”

“From the top of the Ferris wheel, everyone on the ground is gonna look like ants anyway! We won’t even be able to see them!”

“We might not see them, but we will be able to see a giant stuffed giraffe.”

Tim turned to the sky and groaned. “If we die, I’m blaming you.”

Unlike the pretzel line, the Ferris wheel line was long and gave Tim way too much time to get in his head about it. 

“You okay?” Lucy asked when they were near the front of the line. “Are you afraid of heights?”

He shook his head. “Heights, no. Rickety, unstable machinery, not a fan.”

“It’ll be fine, seriously.”

Tim nodded, but he could see from Lucy’s face that it wasn’t convincing to someone who knew him as well as she did.

“I can go by myself if you’d like. I’m sure I’ll be able to find them.”

“No, I’ll be fine.”

Lucy gave the operator a couple of dollars and found their seats. After sitting down, she asked him one last time, “Okay?”

He nodded. “Fine.”

The wheel moved once and stopped again.

“Woah, why are we stopping?” he asked.

Even in her concern, Lucy couldn’t help but giggle a little. “He’s just putting more people in their cars.”

After a few more starts and stops, the ride started, and they made it all the way to the top. The people really did look like ants, but the carnival itself was beautiful. From the look on Lucy’s face, Tim could tell she thought so too. 

Lucy gleefully looked over the carnival, pointing to things she wanted to try when they got off the wheel. Games she knew were rigged, rides that Tim knew would make him vomit just from looking at them, but she wanted to try it all. She looked over Tim to the other side of the Ferris wheel, where she could see a long stretch of LA. Many things made Lucy a good cop, but one of them was her genuine love for the city, showcased now in the way her eyes danced as she looked at the lit streets and buildings beyond the carnival parking lot. Not that Tim would ever be as annoying about it as Nolan was, but he definitely understood what he was telling Bailey earlier. Because the changing blue, purple, and green lights of the Ferris wheel car were doing wonders for Lucy’s smile.

“There!” she shouted, pointing toward the outskirts of the carnival. “They’re over there.”

Tim looked over her and sure enough, he could see a large brown and yellow blob passing by the tilt-a-whirl. “Good eye,” he complimented. “We’ll go find them after this.”

He waited for Lucy to agree, but she just squinted down at them and pursed her lips. “But what if they start making out again?”

Despite himself, he smiled, knowing where she was going with this. “That is definitely a risk.”

“They probably think we just got lost, right?”

He nodded. 

“So maybe we can just… stay lost?”

He looked up, feigning thinking. “Staying lost sounds good.”

So they stayed lost. Lost amongst tame rides where Tim could see the whole track, lost around more adventurous rides that Lucy rode by herself and animatedly described when she got off. 

They were currently lost near the face painting booth, where Lucy had just gotten a small butterfly on her cheek that Tim could not seem to get a decent picture of. 

“Seriously, Tim, you just tap the butterfly on the screen and it’ll focus.”

“I’m doing that, but it just keeps focusing for a second, then going blurry again!”

“Just keep the camera on the butterfly and it’ll focus eventually.”

“Can’t you just take a selfie or whatever?”

“The back camera looks better! Seriously, how are you a professional photographer for Kojo and then-”

She was cut off by the sound of her ringtone, and when she looked at Tim, he seemed slightly disappointed. “It’s Nolan,” he announced.

She nodded and took the phone from him. “Hey,” she answered.

“Hey,” he greeted back. “They’re gonna start closing up soon and Bailey has an early morning tomorrow. You guys wanna meet near the entrance?”

She looked to Tim and tried to hide her dismay that the night was ending. “Sure, that’s fine. We’ll meet you there.”

Lucy hadn’t realized how tired she was until she landed back in Tim’s passenger seat. They’d spent the full night walking and he seemed wide awake. He kept sneaking looks at her from the driver’s seat. “Hey, you’re not falling asleep on me, are you?”

“I might be,” she replied through a yawn. 

“How is it you can stay up ‘til 2 am working on a case, but a little carnival night does you in?”

“On and off duty Lucy have different needs for sleep, Tim.”

He chuckled, but let her watch the lights go by in comfortable silence on the way back to her apartment. 

When they’d finally arrived, she found herself lingering, mostly due to a lack of energy to bring herself all the way upstairs. “Thank you for today,” she groaned, mustering a sleepy smile for him.

“No problem,” he nodded. 

She gave the stuffed koala in her lap one last stroke before holding it out to him. “Your prize?”

He stared at it for a moment. “Keep it. I think it likes you better anyway.”

That gave her more energy for a real smile. She opened the door and stepped out. 

“Have a good night,” she said.

“Goodnight.” 

She turned to her apartment, took a couple of steps, then turned back before he could take off. 

“Tim?” she said, knocking on his passenger window.

He rolled it down to hear her. “Yeah?”

“I’ve decided having a ‘not-a-date’ person is, in fact, a good idea.”

He huffed out a laugh and stared at the floor of his truck for a moment. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Chapter Text

Lucy Chen was a woman of her word, and today she regretted it. It would be her luck that she’d offer a shift of no AC right before the hottest day of the month. 

“I hate you,” Jackson muttered, angrily waving the hand fan he’d made her pull over to buy.

“I hate me too.” 

Their lack of conversation was interrupted by her ringtone. “Can you see who that is?” she asked.

“It’s Tim.” 

Ugh. “Put it on speaker.” Her ringtone cut off. “Hey,” she answered. 

“Can you tell me what this sound is?” Tim went quiet long enough for her to hear the whooshing of cold air in his shop.

“Are you kidding me? This is the one day you use your AC?”

“This has nothing to do with you, Chen; today is the hottest day all month. I’m sure you heard?”

“You’re not funny.”

“I disagree.” She heard him turn his AC down so she could hear him better. “How’s West holding up?” 

She looked to the side to see Jackson, freshly wiped sweat beading again on his forehead, mouthing “I hate you. I hate you. I hate you,” on a loop.

“He’s fine!”

Tim gave a small laugh. “Yeah, I’m sure he is. Hey, look, I know I’m having my fun, but I didn’t know it was gonna be this hot today when we agreed on those terms.”

“You saying I can turn my AC on?”

“I’m saying I’ll make fun of you if you do, but today, that might be worth it.”

She paused to feign thinking. “I’ll think about it.” With that, she reached over and hung up on him before cranking her AC to full blast. “Not a word.”

“Trust me, you’ll get no complaints from me today,” Jackson said, putting away his hand fan. 

After a couple of minutes of the air conditioning drying their sweat and getting their bodies back to normal temperatures, Jackson turned to Lucy. “So,” he started, “was last night at least worth the hours of melting?”

“Yeah!” Lucy answered, “We had a lot of fun!”

“What’d you guys do?”

“Uhhh, we rode some rides, ate some food, we all played games, it was nice.”

Jackson was quiet for a moment. “Did anything else happen?”

Lucy quirked her eyebrows. “I mean Tim gave me that stuffed koala I showed you this morning. Why?”
He was quiet again. “No reason. Just curious.”

Grey didn’t expect to feel as excited as he did when he was offered the next date, but when Jackson sent “Nothing even happened. I just sweated my ass off for four hours for NOTHING!!” to the conspiring group chat, he assumed Lopez or Harper would be next to volunteer an idea until Nolan asked if Grey still had his Rams tickets. 

He’d won the tickets in a raffle and knew from the jump he was too old for that. At least now, they’d be put to good use. 

Tim knocked on his office door and he called for him to come in. “You wanted to see me, Sarge?” he asked.

“Yeah,” he said, putting his pen down and removing his reading glasses. “What are you doing the Sunday after next?”

Tim shook off his surprise, obviously expecting something work-related. “Uh, nothing, why?”

“I have two tickets to SoFi, Rams vs. 49ers, but I can’t make it. Want ‘em?”

Tim’s eyes bugged before he shook his head back into semi-neutrality. “Uh, sir, that’s very kind, but Rams tickets are super expensive. Are you sure you can’t resell? You could probably make a lot of money.”

“So you’re saying you don’t want them?”

“No, no, not saying that at all, I just...” 

“Bradford?”

Tim was still visibly incredulous. “Thank you, sir.”

“No problem. I’ll make sure you have that Sunday off, and if you wanna take anyone else from the precinct as your plus one, let me know so I can give them the day off too.”

“Will do! Thank you again.”

Grey dismissed Tim with his hand. “Debriefing is in three minutes, go wait with everyone else.” 

Once alone, he took out his phone and opened his text messages with Jackson.

“You’re up.”

“So then I tell her ‘Me forgetting to give back your craft scissors is not the same as you packing my curling iron to stay the night at a friend’s,’ and she-”

“Hey, Tim!” Jackson called over Lucy’s shoulder, interrupting her story. “What’d Grey want?”

Lucy turned to look at him. “I mean, if you can tell us, of course.”

“He just… gave me tickets to a Rams game next Sunday. Free and clear.”

“Aw, that’s so sweet of him!” Lucy said. “I hope you have a great time!”

Jackson realized the conversation wasn’t going where they needed without aid. “Was it just one ticket, or…”

“No, it was two, but I have no idea who to take.”

“Maybe take Angela,” Lucy suggested. “As much as she loves Wesley and Jack, I bet she could use a day away.”

Good lord, Jackson thought, feeling the urge to throw something. “Hey, Lucy, you and me should probably go to a football game someday! I know you’ve never been.”

Jackson watched Tim’s eyes bug out. “You’ve never been to a football game?”

YES! 

As Tim grilled Lucy for her apparent lack of culture, Jackson brought his phone back out to return Grey’s text. 

“Mission accomplished.”

Tim had warned Lucy to get to the stadium early, but failing to listen forced her to park at the outskirts of the parking lot when she arrived. Another thing she apparently didn’t get the memo on was attire.

“What are you wearing?” he asked as soon as he saw her. 

“A sweater?” she answered. He recognized it as her favorite.

“You’re gonna overheat.”

“It’s… September.” Tim sighed and shook his head at her and she started to shift uneasily. “Well, I don’t have anything under this, so….”

“Here,” he said, removing the jersey he was wearing and handing it to her.

“You were so excited for this, I can’t just take your jersey.”

“I’ve got a blue undershirt and I can find some gold face paint or something in there.”

She blinked at him a couple of times before accepting the jersey. “Can I change in your truck?”

Tim nodded and opened the driver’s seat door for her. She climbed inside and closed it as he stood guard. 

After a few moments, there was a knock on the window behind him. “Tim?” Lucy’s muffled voice called, and he put his ear to the glass to listen. “We’ve got a problem.”

He stepped back from the door so she could climb out and when she hit the ground, it didn’t take long to see the problem. “Oh…” was all he could get out before he had to hold in his laughter. 

“Don’t laugh!” she said, also holding in her own. 

Lucy was swimming in Tim’s jersey. The neckline spanned across most of her shoulders; the sleeves, which were short on him, hit Lucy slightly above her elbows, and the hem hit her at the tops of her thighs like a mini dress instead of a shirt.

“I look ridiculous,” she complained, letting a few giggles slip through.

“No, you look… short. Like a short person who borrowed a tall person’s jersey.”

“This is not gonna work.” She let her hair out of the ponytail it was in and used the scrunchie to tie the excess fabric in a ball on her left side. But she didn’t tie it at her waist like Tim was expecting, she tied it above her waist, displaying her tanned midriff and the slightly fading black writing on her ribs. The absence of the hanging fabric revealed how skinny her jeans were, showcasing every curve of her hips and thighs that Tim had kicked himself for noticing since he first saw her in civvies. As if that wasn’t enough, she then shook her hair out so it fell in loose waves around her shoulders. When she was all done, she straightened the jersey, which she’d turned into a crop top with a low neckline, and looked at Tim for approval.

Approval wasn’t the right word for what was going on in Tim’s brain at the moment.

He was vaguely aware that she’d said something, but he seemed to have lost every sense but sight for the time being. 

“Hm?” he asked.

“My hair being down should be fine, right? Like, with the heat and everything?”

He dragged his eyes back to hers to answer. “Yeah, should be fine.”

Tim stood behind Lucy in the ticket line with his hands on her shoulders. Mostly to keep her located in his brain, but if he was being honest with himself, it was a bit protective. He knew how sports fans could be and aside from the indisputable fact that she looked good, something about the rowdy, loud sea of guys in every direction just made him want her close, made him want her to know he was close.

They turned their tickets in and he led her inside, hand on her upper back, careful not to touch her exposed skin. 

“Is it always like this?” she asked, seeming less uneasy than him but still huddling closer.

“Yeah, pretty much. The worst is already over if you’re not sitting next to annoying people.”

“But I’m sitting next to you, and there’s not much I can do about that.”

He laughed despite himself. Of course, she could make jokes even when visibly uncomfortable. “Ha ha,” he deadpanned. 

They made their way up the many, many stadium stairs, through the people who were already sitting, before claiming their own seats. “We have a good view,” Lucy said before looking at Tim, who looked about ready to jump out of his skin. “Excited?”

“Hm?” he asked, turning to her, eyes wide. “Uh, yeah, I just haven’t been to one of these in a while.”

Lucy wondered if this was what he looked like when he watched football at home. On the edge of his seat before the game even starts, buzzing with anticipation. 

He turned away from the field to look at her. “How much do you know about football?” 

“Uh, I tried to google some stuff this morning, but eventually, I just gave up. I figured I’d just cheer when you did.”

Tim hung his head and laughed. “Okay, basically, you’re just hoping our team gets the ball all the way to the other end of the field. And you’re hoping the other team doesn’t get the ball to the side that our team is protecting.”

Lucy nodded along, understanding, but also enjoying how much she knew Tim loved explaining his interests. 

“It’ll make more sense when you see it. Basically, you cheer when our team gets to the other end with the ball or tackles the ball out of the other team’s hands. And if all else fails, you can follow my lead and no one’s gonna notice.”

Lucy agreed but knew she wanted to understand the sport by the end of the day. So she planned to analyze the game as best as she could. 

That plan was interrupted however when the Rams got a touchdown 10 minutes into the game and the crowd all stood to cheer, including Tim. She watched Tim roar in victory with both of his hands in the air, clapping so hard she figured they must hurt. 

She stood to join him, shouting out a quick “Woo!” and clapping as hard as she could. 

“What was that?!” Tim said, pausing his celebration. “I know you can do better than that.”

So she gave him better than that. She shrieked as loud as her lungs would allow her, cupping her hands around her mouth to amplify her voice.

“There you go!” he praised, turning back to the field. “WOOOOO!”

“WOOOOO!” 

She knew she couldn’t scream like that every time, but this time was worth it. 

The teams stayed neck and neck for most of the first quarter, with the Rams staying ahead until the 49ers landed their third field goal, putting them slightly ahead. 

“Is that bad?” Lucy asked Tim, who had finally relaxed in his seat for the first time since the game had started.

“Hm?” He looked at the board and shook his head. “Nah, they’ll be fine, it’s only the first quarter.” 

His facial expression and most of his demeanor cloaked concern for his team, but the telltale bouncing of his leg said something different. 

The 49ers seemed to be saving their energy in the first quarter because the second quarter was… grim for the Rams. The surrounding audience members wearing red and black were cheering much louder than the ones whose colors matched Lucy and Tim’s. Lucy looked to the side and saw, despite his slumped posture, his leg was bouncing at almost a blurred speed. 

“There’s still half the game left,” Lucy encouraged, nudging his arm on the rest beside her.

“No, yeah,” he said, looking at the scoreboard and sighing. “Hey, are you hungry?”

“A little,” she said with a shrug. “I could use a snack.”

“Me too. The line for the concession stand gets really long when everyone goes for halftime, so it’s probably a better idea to watch the rest of the quarter from the entrance to get there before everyone goes over there.”

Lucy’s eyes widened as he got ready to leave. “Oh! Okay, that’s fine.” 

Once he’d made it to his feet and started to walk away, he stopped, looking back as if he’d forgotten something. “You coming?”

Her eyebrows knitted together. “You can go without me, I’ll protect the seats.”

“We have reserved seats, Chen, they’ll be fine.”

“You said yourself that I’m short, I see the game better from up here anyway. You won’t be gone long.”

He looked down the long aisle to the stairs Lucy could barely see from here and when he looked back, she saw it in his eyes: he was worried to leave her.

She gave a gentle smile. “I’ll be fine, Tim, I can handle myself.”

His shoulders descended slightly. “I know you can. If anything gets sketchy, or you even get a bad feeling about someone-”

“I can handle myself,” she repeated. “Now get down there before you spend all of halftime in line.”

With an eye roll, he left, sneaking looks at her ever so often all the way down the aisle and the stairs. He wasn’t wrong, leaving her there was unnerving. Especially when there were about five groups of dudes at least three rows away from their seats and each had at least two members ogling her at various times. They’d waited for Tim to leave, no doubt. She momentarily debated taking the scrunchie out of Tim’s jersey and letting it hang around her again, but she was in broad daylight, and she didn’t see a single one of these guys she couldn’t take in a fight if it came to that. 

As awkward as she felt among strangers without Tim, she felt lucky she didn’t have to see whatever reaction he’d have to the scoreboard at the end of the quarter because it was… pessimistic. On the bright side, it was now halftime, so if Tim’s plan worked, he’d be back in a few minutes with snacks, and she could watch the cheerleaders while she waited.

As the cheerleaders got into formation, she heard the opening notes of none other than the song from the TikTok dance Tamara had taught her a few weeks prior. She simply couldn’t help herself from at least doing the dance in her seat to the opening chorus. 

“Get it, girl!” she heard a female voice behind her call, and she turned around to see a heavyset middle-aged lady trying to mimic a few of her moves, sitting next to who Lucy assumed was her husband and three kids. 

“You wanna learn?” Lucy asked, extending her arm out to the woman, who then looked back and forth between her husband and kids before taking Lucy’s hand and getting up with the giddiest smile on her face. 

“Oh, my god, Mom, please sit down,” the oldest, a teenager, whined, shielding his eyes with his hands. 

“Ignore them,” the mother told Lucy. “They never wanna see me have fun.”

Lucy laughed as she got into position, followed by the woman imitating her stance. “Step right, together,” she instructed, stepping to the right, then putting her feet together. “Left, together. Right arm over your head, pop!” That last instruction was accompanied by Lucy popping her hip in the air, which the woman then copied by turning her booty in her husband’s direction and popping it in his face, earning a belly laugh from Lucy. “Okay, let’s keep going.”

Lucy spent the remaining bridges and second chorus teaching the woman the dance until there was only one chorus left at the end of the song. “You ready?” she asked.

“I think so!” the mom said, straightening her clothes.

 And they were off. Lucy, with the precision of someone who’d been practicing the dance for weeks now, and the mother dancing about how one would expect after seeing the dance one time. Lucy continued to dance while watching the mom give all of her effort to execute about 25% of the moves. And despite her earlier remark, her kids and husband seemed to be greatly enjoying the display if the tears of laughter rolling down their cheeks were any testament. 

As the song drew to a close and Lucy was finishing her dance, she felt a tap on her thigh. Ready for a fight, she turned to see the man seated in front of her pointing at the Jumbotron. There she saw, shadowed by her dance partner, her own reflection, 33 feet tall, now clapping her hands over her mouth and cheeks to hide what to be the deepest blush of her life. 

She heard the whoops of the crowd, easily deciphering the objectifying ones from the good-natured, but both embarrassed her almost equally. She sat down and dissolved into a fit of giggles, thanking her lucky stars Tim wasn’t there to see that.

“I’m Marsha,” she heard in the lady’s voice behind her, and when she turned and removed her hands from her eyes, she saw her hand outstretched for a handshake.

She reached out to accept. “Lucy.”

She chatted with the woman, who introduced her to the rest of her family and proudly showed off the name “Montgomery”, their last name, splayed across the back of their jerseys. She was so immersed in the conversation, she jumped when her shoulder was poked.

“Oh!” she exclaimed once she turned back to see Tim holding two plates of nachos topped with jalapeños, and her mouth watered instantly. “My hero.”

He sat as she reached up to grab her snack tray from him, popping the first chip in her mouth immediately. “Lucy, would you like to know a fun fact about football stadiums?”

She nodded, taking in another chip. 

“The concession stands have a TV above them.”

Lucy froze, fearing she knew exactly where this “fun” fact would end.

“And those TVs are connected to the Jumbotron,” he finished with a smile. 

“No,” she muttered, burying her face into her now slightly greasy hands.

Tim’s shoulders were now bouncing with laughter. “I think you taught, like, 30% of my line that dance. I don’t think you’re supposed to steal the show from the cheerleaders, they work pretty hard, you know.” 

“Shut up. Shut up, shut up forever.”

“Hey, don’t make fun of her!” she heard Marsha’s voice scold from behind. “Your girl is a wonderful dancer.”

Before Lucy could correct her, or even assess if Tim had heard the comment, the game was starting back up, and the entire crowd’s focus was back on the field.

The third quarter was better, giving the two more opportunities to take turns roaring together, laughing every time one of them hit an unexpected pitch. 

“Tim, look!” Lucy said, pointing to the scoreboard at the end of the third quarter to see the Rams only 10 points behind. “Do you think they can do it?”

Tim was back to his first-quarter glee. “Damn right, I do!”

And the fourth quarter looked like Tim might be right. They scored a field goal, which put them even closer with a score of 25 to 31, and the quarterback was mere yards away from the end zone. The crowd was on the edge of their seats as he got closer and closer to being tackled, but shrieked with glee as he jumped over the linebacker, sailing right into the endzone, giving them a tie with only 5 seconds left on the clock. 

“If they can make this field goal, they win,” Tim explained, before turning back to watch the kicker get into position.

Lucy realized she hadn’t paid much attention to how many points things were worth, but she could see from Tim’s posture and facial expression that a single question or word out of her right now might result in an untimely death. So she turned to watch as the kicker ran up, swung his leg, and…

A perfect field goal.

The scoreboard now read “HOME: 32 | VISITOR: 31.”

One point.

The crowd was deafening, and Lucy was elated to add her voice, louder than she had throughout the entire game. Her cries were sure to give her laryngitis the next morning, but they were nothing compared to Tim’s scream, which seemed to come from the very base of his stomach. And distracted by her own celebration, she was vaguely aware that, along with about half of the Rams fans in the stadium, he was jumping up and down.

She didn’t have long to think about this victory of this team she’d become unexpectedly attached to, because suddenly, she was in the air, spinning in tight circles, with Tim’s victorious cries directly in her ear. His arms were wrapped around her torso so tightly he was literally squeezing her new cheers out of her. 

After not nearly enough time, he put her back down, dropping his hands back onto her shoulders. “WE WON!” he shouted in her face.

“WE WON! ” 

Finally, they broke their bubble to chorus with the crowd again, his arm remaining over her shoulders the entire time.

They didn’t quite feel like navigating the dense sea of people, so they stayed in their seats for a solid 20 minutes until leaving was manageable. In their idle chatting, their adrenaline highs crashed and burned, leaving them more tired than they’d been in recent memory.

Lucy used every remaining gram of energy, of which there weren’t many, to refrain from leaning her full weight onto Tim as they returned to his truck. 

“Text me when you get home,” he commanded, running a hand over his face. “It’s not good to drive as tired as we are.”

“Yeah, you too,” she replied, tapping the hood of his truck once before turning to walk in the direction of her car. All the way at the edge of the parking lot. Ugh.

“Nope,” she heard behind her, before the sound of his doors unlocking twice. “Get in.”

She had no energy to protest, and she figured it was unwise at that point.

The short drive over to her car was silent but still comfortable. She felt so at ease in his passenger seat, not falling asleep in less than three minutes was a strain. 

“We’re here,” he said, nudging her arm and inspiring a groan from her.

“Thanks,” she said, gathering her things. “For everything. I had a great time.”
She turned to see the last moment of a smile before it was overtaken by a yawn. “Me too. I’ll see you at work.”

“I’ll get your jersey back to you. Washed.” 

She stepped out of his passenger seat and headed to her car, knowing he wouldn’t drive away ‘til she got in. “Hey, Chen?” she heard him say and turned to see his window rolled down.

“Yeah?”

“If you think of any other sports you haven’t seen… let me know. I can’t have you walking around the station this uncultured.”

Thankfully, her body didn’t have the energy to fully react to that, but she was aware of her brain doing somersaults. 

“Will do,” she finally replied, feeling herself smile slightly. “Goodnight, Tim.”

“Night.”

Chapter Text

Angela marched into the break room where Nyla and Jackson were preparing their morning coffees.

“Status report?” she asked, interrupting their chatter. 

“Uhhh,” Nyla started, knowing what Angela was referring to. “On shift, they’re basically the same. Roll call is still just obvious flirting with barely plausible deniability. Tim is still telling that Jumbotron story to anyone who will listen, though. And even some who won’t.”

“Home is the same,” Jackson added. “No significant increases in smiles while texting, and when she says she’s going out with friends, there’s actual Instagram proof of who she’s with.”

“Really?” Angela asked, and the two nodded. “Ugh. Okay, guys. I’m calling it. They haven’t been hiding a cupcake phase for the last week, the game didn’t work.”

“Grey’s gonna be pissed,” Jackson said, retrieving an empty paper cup for Angela, who accepted it and got to work on her coffee. 

“I mean, seriously! Apparently, Lucy said she was gonna give Tim’s jersey back and, yesterday before shift, she actually did. Who does that? Everyone knows you keep every piece of clothing he loans you.” They both shot her a look before she finished. “Wesley’s probably had to buy three new casual wardrobes since meeting me.”

“We tried something Lucy would like, we tried something Tim would like…” Nyla tapped her cup in thought. “Maybe we try something more neutral, that anyone would like?”

“What were you thinking?”

“If this is my official turn, I suggest a club night.”

“Hard pass,” Angela said. “Tim hates clubs, especially the dance floor.”

“Yeah, and Lucy won’t wanna dance alone all night,” Jackson mentioned. 

“Okay, so they go somewhere nicer, not one of those tacky clubs for the general public. I know a guy who can get us into a really nice place downtown.”

“‘Us?’” Angela repeated and Nyla nodded.

“These dates have gotten very… datey. It’s best if we all go to maintain the platonic cover. Plus, if we all go, we can monitor our progress over some good food.”

Jackson quirked an eyebrow at her. “Harper… do you just need to go clubbing?”

“Desperately.”

It was a full week and a half before the six of them could sync their schedules for a night, but Lucy had been dying to get to Altitude since Jackson mentioned Nyla had a way in. Because she’d been craving this for so long, she had to look perfect. 

She shook out her painstakingly applied curls for more volume and smoothed her hand over her body again. “Are you sure I shouldn’t have gone with the green dress with the sequins?” she called to Jackson from her bedroom.

“I’m positive!” he called back. “You look amazing in that one!”

She gave herself another look in the mirror before deciding he was right. After realizing she’d left her lucky red lipstick in her purse on the counter, she went to retrieve it and ran into Tamara preparing herself a snack in the kitchen.

Tamara’s jaw dropped as Jackson left his bedroom, adjusting his sleeves. “Woah!” she exclaimed, looking at Lucy. “Who are you getting all dressed up for?”

Jackson hadn’t yet told Tamara that there was an actual answer to that question. Any mention of the bet to Tamara would result in Lucy knowing within the hour, but Jackson figured Tamara would forgive him for keeping the secret once the objects of their constant gossip started dating. 

“I’m dressed up for myself, ” Lucy replied, digging in her bag for the lipstick. 

Tamara looked at Jackson with furrowed brows, and he shook his head to confirm that was, in fact, bull. They’d lived with Lucy long enough to know the difference between her “for myself” and her “for someone else” outfits, and this wine red velvet cocktail dress that Lucy kept smoothing to make sure each curve landed where it was supposed to was not for herself. 

“Alright, you two, be safe!” Tamara said as Lucy grabbed her clutch and linked arms with Jackson. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”

“We’re going drinking and you’re 18.”

“My statement stands.”

When they arrived at Altitude, the line of well-dressed people trying to enter was at least 100 feet long, but they strolled past them to the bouncers trying to keep the crowd back. “We’re with Detective Nyla Harper,” Jackson announced.

After checking the list, the bouncers unlatched the velvet rope for them to walk through. Lucy and Jackson walked up the stairs, giggling to each other at the cries of “You’re letting them in?!” and “I’m with Detective Barker too!” behind them. 

When Lucy entered the club, she could see why people were so desperate to get in. The place was a colorfully lit ballroom set up with tables and booths, and the focus was a giant crystal chandelier hanging above an exquisite dance floor. And the music was actually good, unlike what she remembered from a lot of college nights. The only problem was the volume of said music, which she knew Tim would want to complain about all night.

“They’re over there!” Jackson said, gently pulling Lucy’s arm away from her observations. 

Angela saw them first, and she began waving as she finished sipping her cocktail. “Hey!” she called, getting the attention of the group, who looked over to the approaching pair. 

Nyla, Nolan, and Angela all waved, but Tim’s hands remained relaxed on the table, his eyes definitely not fixed on Lucy’s face. From the slight smile on his lips, she assumed the curves of the dress were, in fact, falling correctly. When they arrived at the round booth, she slid in next to Tim, leaving Jackson on the end. 

“That’s quite a dress, Chen,” Nyla complimented.

“Thanks!” she replied, beaming. “I got it in case of a special occasion and tonight seemed like a good enough reason to use it. How’d you get us in here?”

“Guy I went to college with, his dad owns the place. The food is reasonably priced since the entrance itself is so expensive, but we always got in for free.”

One good thing about LA was the connections. 

“ Helloooo,” Jackson called, “Is no one gonna mention how good I look tonight? Like, check the watch! The shoes!”

As the group proceeded to discuss each other’s outfits, Lucy’s eyes landed on Tim’s vibrant-looking drink with a lemon wedge, sugar rim, and two skinny straws. She gave him an inquisitive look. “When in Rome, right?” he said.

“Can I try?” she asked, and he nodded. She sipped the drink, letting the tangy, sweet flavors wash over her tongue, sending her eyes wide. 

“You like that?” She made a small noise in response, and he continued, “I’ll buy you exactly one. The drinks here are not as ‘reasonably priced’ as the food.”

“So, Angela, where’s Wesley tonight?” Nolan asked as Angela took another long pull from her drink. 

“Home with the baby,” she said. “We’re trying to plan a nice dinner and didn’t wanna pay for babysitting twice. So if y’all see me at a fancy nightclub ordering chicken tenders, mind your business.”

“You want the rest of this?” Tim muttered, pushing his drink toward Lucy, which she greedily took. 

“Woah, slow down, there, Chen, you just got here!” Angela grinned.

“I’m not driving!” Lucy replied, but she knew she wasn’t planning on getting drunk tonight. She continued to ship through the straws, savoring the taste.

Tim flipped through the appetizer menu, pointing at things and looking to Lucy for approval. “This one looks good,” she said, gesturing to a small picture of crab cakes.

“Yeah, but look,” he said, going over the item description. “They make these with coconut. You don’t like coconut.”

Nyla chuckled, shaking her head. “I don’t know how you guys end up sharing so much food. Between the two of you, you have the pickiest eating system in the world.”

“We have more taste in common than you think!” Lucy protested. “Even if he doesn’t like mushrooms because he doesn’t enjoy happiness.”

“And she loves pickles despite pickles being an abomination.”

“You’re an abomination,” she muttered, slightly muffled by the rocks glass at her lips.

“Hm?”

“Hm?”

Halfway into their appetizers, Tim saw Lucy’s eyes widen at the opening notes of some Rihanna song. “Jackson!” she cried, turning away from the table.

“Oh, no,” Nolan muttered. 

“Sorry, guys, this is our song,” Jackson said, taking Lucy by the hand to the dance floor and leaving Tim’s thigh cold where her leg had been squeezed against his. 

He remembered at debriefing, she mentioned they’d gotten a 211 in the middle of lunch, and he assumed she hadn’t eaten between then and the appetizers, because the alcohol seemed to be hitting her a little harder than usual. Either that or this was just how she danced. Free, loose, still on beat, a lot of arm movement. 

“She’s good, huh?” Angela asked, interrupting his staring. 

He turned back for a moment before continuing to watch her. “Chen? Yeah, she’s alright. Little dorky though.” From his spot, he could see her mouth moving along with the lyrics and he wished he could hear her up close. He’d heard her sing off-key when she was just kidding around, or unexpectedly beautifully under her breath if she heard a song she liked in public, and he wondered which she was doing now. Given her facial expressions, he assumed it was the former, and the thought made him hold back a smile. 

A waiter brought a tray of shots Nyla had ordered to their table, and she, Nolan, and Angela all took the shots meant for them. From the floor, Jackson saw the tray arrive at the table, so in no time, he and Lucy were back to take their shots as well. Nyla then picked the last up and held it out to Tim with a question in her eyes.

Tim shook his head. “Driving.”

Angela’s hand soared out like lightning to take Tim’s shot from Nyla. “I’ll take it!” 

“I assume we’re driving you home, then?” Jackson asked her.

 She downed her shot, and after processing it, looked back to Jackson. “And that is why you’re my favorite.”

“Nyla! Come dance with us!” Lucy requested, reaching her tipsy hands out to her friend.

With an eye roll and a smile, Nyla motioned for Tim to scoot over so she could slide out of the booth. “I’m gonna make sure they don’t hurt themselves,” she joked. 

Jackson managed to get Nyla into a funky two-step that Lucy then enthusiastically joined, but after only two songs, Nyla was back at the table, despite the duo’s protests. “I need substantially more alcohol before I continue,” she said as she settled back into her seat on the inside next to Tim. 

Needless to say, Angela had gotten herself comfortably drunk and was now cooing over photos of Wesley and Jack that she was showing the table. “Look how cuuuuuuute!” she said, pointing to Jack. “I could just eat his chubby little face. And look at Wesley! I could eat him too, but in a different way.”

Drunk Angela had no shame. 

Tim felt a weight settle next to him and he turned, surprised to see Jackson alone, panting. “She is too crazy. How does she have this much energy after work?”

“Adrenaline,” Tim replied, looking over him to see Lucy continue dancing like the world was about to end. 

“She never would’ve come back to the table with me during this song. She’s obsessed.”

“Really?” Angela asked, eyes going wide. “Tim, you should go dance with her!”

He looked at the sea of bodies surrounding her. “I’m good. I’ll wait ‘til the dance floor thins out a little.”

“But they won’t play this song later! And Jackson just said she loves this song!” 

“Lucy loves every song.”

“Yeah, but this song is meant for two people,” Jackson cut in. “Everyone knows that.”

And now that it was mentioned, Tim could see most of the patrons were indeed dancing in pairs. And maybe it was the clusters leaving more open room, or the fact that he could see Lucy beginning to notice she was one of few people without a partner, but suddenly, the crowd seemed slightly more manageable. 

Lucy felt a tap on her shoulder and abruptly turned, expecting to tell some cocky stranger to get lost. Instead, she was face to face with Tim’s blue eyes, subtly changing hues in the moving colored lights. “You’re here!” she said. 

“I’m here. Hoping for someone else?”

She shook her head. “I still technically owe you a dance, so not this time.”

“Mmhm.”

Despite most couples on the floor being practically glued together, Tim and Lucy’s first few dance moves were done a good few inches away from each other. Tim attempted to put some spice in his simple two-step while Lucy continued the chaos she’d been at for at least 30 minutes now. It wasn’t until Tim grabbed her hand to give her a quick spin that she decided she didn’t feel like letting go yet. So they danced like that for the rest of the song- each doing their own complementary moves so they could stay connected by one hand. 

The next song had more of a slower R & B feel to it, so he reached for her other hand, moving both their arms together in smaller, more controlled motions. The volume of the music required them to get closer when they needed to talk to each other, which Lucy rationalized was the only reason they ended up so close. 

“That lady from the game was right,” he said, close to her ear. 

“About what?”

“You are a good dancer.”

She shook away the blush that threatened to rise. “Thanks!”

“As long as we stick to slower stuff, of course. Fast songs, on the other hand…”

“Oh, shut up,” she laughed, lightly shoving his chest and turning like she was about to walk away. Before she could even think, his open hand pressed against her stomach, pulling her back to him as if on instinct.

And what could they do but freeze? Lucy could feel the warmth of his breath on the side of her face, and the small indents of his shirt buttons against her back through the fabric of her dress. She could feel the tautness of his hand against her, and she knew he wasn’t quite sure what to do with it next. So she turned, slowly, carefully, to not create any more distance between them than he had. Once she was fully turned, he seemed to understand she wasn’t telling him he had to remove his hand, because her turn moved it to her waist, before he settled it on her hip.

“Is this okay?” he asked. 

Trying to keep her expression neutral, she nodded, reaching up to place her hands on his shoulders before moving them to interlace her fingers behind his neck. “Is this?”

He didn’t answer, just pulled her closer with the hand touching her and let the other dangle at his side. 

Lucy wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that, all she knew was that multiple songs were passing, and they maintained their positioning for all of them, only changing the rhythm of their swaying to match the tempo of whatever was playing. At first, there was small talk as they tried to keep from getting awkward, but as the songs grew slower, his head came closer and closer to her shoulder, eventually resting there as they fell silent. 

Since Caleb, Lucy wasn’t always a huge fan of nights like this, even when she was with fellow cops. The alcohol, the strangers, the volume of the music that could cloak a scream. But here, even with only one of Tim’s arms holding her close, she knew nothing in the world could hurt her. She was safe in every sense of the word. Safe from harm, safe to dance like an idiot, safe to drink enough to stumble over each step she took if she wanted to. Because she’d be caught every time.

Maybe she had drunk more than she thought. 

With a gun to his head, Tim couldn’t repeat a single lyric to any song that had played that night. What he did know was that Lucy was a phenomenal dancer. She might have accidentally hypnotized him with her hips because all he could do was feel them sway with the music and resist the urge to pull them closer when they moved too far. 

But because watching her had had him so transfixed, he noticed when her movements got blockier, and he even noticed her catch herself from stumbling a couple of times. “You okay?” he asked.

He felt her nod into his chest. “Mmhm!” But it did not sound convincing. 

He pulled his head back from her shoulder and loosened his grip on her to get a good look, and only then did he see her shoes. “Stilettos?”

“I needed to look hot, okay?”

“Do you need to take them off?” he asked with an amused smile. 

“As fancy as this place might be, I’m not putting my bare feet on a dirty dance floor.”

He deemed that a good call. He pointed his free thumb over his shoulder towards the entrance into the club. “Wanna get some air?”

In the back of his mind, he was vaguely aware that feeling her hands slip from his shoulders sucked.

When they got outside into the night, he noticed the state of her hair and makeup and couldn’t help but chuckle.

“What?” Lucy asked with furrowed brows.

“Nothing, you just… you look like you had a lot of fun in there.”

She retrieved a compact mirror from her clutch and looked inside. “I look a mess,” she declared with a giggle. She ran her fingers through her hair, which helped, rubbed at the smudged mascara under her eyes, which made it worse, and ran her thumb under her bottom lip, which just smeared it further. “How do I look now?”

Even with raccoon eyes and red streaking to her cheek, Tim still couldn’t tell her the word for how he thought she looked. “Here, let me,” he said instead, reaching his thumb out to her chin.

Gently, but with enough force to remove her stubborn lipstick, Tim swiped his thumb under her lip and onto her cheek until the shape of her lips was the last remaining perfection in her makeup. “There you go,” he said. 

She blinked a couple of times before nodding. “Right. Wanna go sit over there?” she asked, pointing to a slightly high wall above the stairs near the side of the building. 

“Lead the way.”

He helped her up onto the wall before propping himself up. As soon as she was settled, she reached down to remove her shoes, setting them beside her and wiggling her toes. “That’s much better,” she said. 

The gentle wind blew her now wavy hair away from Tim, giving him a better view of her face. After seeing her in so many kinds of light, he’d forgotten what the moon did for her. 

Yeah… he definitely couldn’t tell her how she looked.

Lucy tried to remember if Tim had a few of his shirt buttons undone when he got there or if they’d just gotten undone throughout the night. It was entirely possible that she’d accidentally pulled them apart as she’d tried to find a place to leave her hands as they danced. That dance. Since when was Tim such a good dance partner? Who had taught him to slow dance like that? Did she care to know?

“What’s going on up there?” he asked her, causing her to look back up to his eyes.

She shook her head slightly. “Just a little cold.”

“My jacket’s inside if you want me to go get it.”

“No! Stay here.” She heard the neediness in her voice, so she added, “I’m gonna head inside in a few minutes, I just needed a little bit of air.”

Her request didn’t seem to sound as needy to him as it did to her, because he just nodded and continued to look over the trees. 

“Penny for your thoughts?” she asked after a few moments of silence. 

“I didn’t think I could get through an entire night at a club without having to arrest somebody.” At his response, she shook her head with a smile, and he insisted, “What? It’s true!”

“Only Tim Bradford would get all dressed up and spend the whole night thinking about arresting someone.”

He held a hand up to correct, “Dreading. And that’s not all I was thinking about.”

“Hm. What else were you thinking about?” 

She looked to see him squint his eyes to remember. “That Harper lied about the food being reasonably priced.”

Lucy huffed out another laugh.

“That as much as I love Angela, I was glad Jackson volunteered to take her home. Drunk Angela is not fun to drive with.”

Tim’s musings were cut off by an audible growl from Lucy’s stomach. 

“That your food obviously wasn’t very good because you spent most of the time pushing it around with your fork. How hungry are you right now?”

“Adrenaline really does hide a lot of bodily needs,” she whined.

“You wanna get out of here?” he asked, searching her face. “Go eat somewhere where crab cakes aren’t $20?”

She nodded, smiling. “Yeah.” 

She put her shoes back on as he hopped off the wall to help her down, and together they made their way back to the club. Upon entry, they saw far fewer people on the dance floor, but in the dead center were Jackson, doing what could actually be classified as dancing, Angela and Nyla, doing some drunken mockery of dancing with wide smiles. Lucy shook her head and laughed at the sight. 

They made their way to the table where Nolan sat alone, sipping his drink. Once he caught sight of the pair approaching him, he simply said, “They left me.”

“We’re gonna go. Can you tell Jackson I’m taking Lucy home?”

“What’s going…” Lucy turned around to see Angela making her way over to the table. “What’s going on over here?” 

“We’re gonna head out,” Tim informed her, withdrawing a few bills from his money clip to put on the table. 

“I’ll pay you back for my half,” Lucy told him.

Before he could respond, Angela cut in, “No! Don’t go! Lucy, I didn’t get a chance to dance with you!”

“She’ll dance with you next time, Ang.”

“You’re gonna steal her for the whole night next time, too!” she whined, causing Nolan to snort-laugh. 

“Good night, Angela!” Tim called, guiding Lucy to the door by her arm.

“Tell Nyla we said thank you!” Lucy called over her shoulder, mostly to Nolan, as Angela had no shot of doing that. 

Nyla and Jackson came back to the table as the door was shutting behind Tim and Lucy. “Did you… see that?” Angela asked them. 

“Did they just leave together?” Jackson whisper-shouted.

“They did! They did! ” Angela squealed. 

“And Lopez managed not to tell them the entire plan before they left!” Nolan joked from his seat. 

“Wait…” Nyla said, visibly doing drunken mental math. “Does this mean I won the bet?”

Angela softly shoved Nyla’s arm with a megawatt smile. “Who cares about the stupid bet?! WE DID IT!”

“WE DID IT!” Jackson called back, with his hands in the air. 

“Celebratory shots?”

“NO!” Nolan cried, finishing his drink before any of the three could steal it.

What the group wouldn’t realize for a while was that Tim and Lucy did not leave before everyone else to go hook up. What they’d never know was that they left to give Lucy’s feet a longer break as she and Tim sat in his truck in a nearby In-N-Out parking lot. They ate cheeseburgers and fries, which she had used Apple Pay for as he fumbled with his money clip. 

“Technology is a marvel, Tim,” she’d told him.

The nature of the night had messed with their concepts of time, so despite having early shifts the next day, it was easy to lose track of time. Before they knew it, they’d stayed in that parking lot talking almost 30 minutes after they’d finished their food. 

Finally, they made it back to Lucy’s apartment tired, and full.

“How do you keep driving me everywhere?”

Tim chuckled as she got out of the car without waiting for an answer. 

She turned once she landed on her feet. “Thank you. Again,” she said, stepping backward toward the apartment. 

“Of course. I’ll see you tomorrow, Lucy.”

“See you tomorrow, Tim.”

It wasn’t until the doors had closed behind her that he noticed something shiny on the floor of the passenger seat. After bending to pick it up, he realized it was Lucy’s favorite red lipstick and figured it must have fallen out of her purse. 

He drove off, planning ways to make fun of her for leaving it when he gave it back to her tomorrow. 

Chapter Text

“Okay, in hindsight, I might have jumped the gun.”

Nyla paused handing Nolan his $50 bill back to shoot Angela a death glare. “You think?”

“In Angela’s defense, she was drunk,” Jackson said, putting his $50 back into his wallet. 

“They danced like they were superglued, they went outside for way too long, then came back to announce they were leaving together,” Angela defended. “Anyone would’ve assumed the same thing!”

“Including two drunk detectives,” Nolan muttered. 

“Lopez, if you want, I can take my turn now,” Jackson offered, and Angela shook her head. 

“Nah, I got this. I know the secret to getting two people to melt for each other, and I have a secret weapon none of you do.”

They all allowed Angela her dramatic pause, staring at her in anticipation. 

“A baby!”

Tim arrived at the Lopez-Evers residence just as the sun was starting to set. When Wesley called and asked him to babysit, he made sure to sound like it was for Angela’s benefit so she could have her date night, when in reality, it felt like forever since he’d gotten some bonding time with his godson. 

He waited a few moments after knocking for Wesley to open the door. “Hey!” he greeted Tim. “Thanks for doing this, by the way.”

“No problem,” Tim said, stepping through the doorway as Wesley closed it behind him. “Now, where’s little man?”

“Baby, who’s that?” he heard Angela call from deeper inside the house.

Wesley answered, “It’s Tim!”

“What’s he doing here?” she asked, making Tim’s eyebrows furrow. 

“Uhhhh, he’s here to babysit while we’re at dinner?”

“Wait, but…” Tim heard the click of her heels as she marched out to the foyer, putting an earring in as she came into view. “But I already called-” 

A knock at the door cut off her sentence, and Wesley crossed back to open the door. There stood Lucy, holding up two small baby maracas and a stuffed octopus. 

“Hi!” she greeted, beaming. 

“... Lucy.” Angela finished. 

Lucy surveyed the room and seemed to understand the mixup when she saw Tim. Her smile faded as her arms fell to her sides. “Was I not supposed to come?” she asked. 

“If you guys only want one person here, I can go,” Tim offered. “She seems a bit better equipped anyway.” He looked back in time to see a tiny smile return to her face. 

“No!” Angela protested. “No, uh, this is a two-person job anyway, so this works out perfectly. He’s a pretty active baby, so he’ll probably keep you on your toes. Ready, Wes?”

“Uh, yeah! Let’s go!” He stepped out of the way so Lucy could come in.

Angela clacked across the foyer to meet Wesley at the front door. “Thank you again for doing this, food’s in the fridge, text us if you need anything!”

“Have fun!” Lucy called as they left, and Tim couldn’t tell whether or not she was aware she was shaking the baby maracas. 

Once the door was closed, the two turned to face each other, not exactly sure where to start. 

“I’m guessing you haven’t babysat before?”  

Lucy’s posture relaxed. “No, not yet. I’ve been asking Angela when my turn was gonna be, and earlier, when she called to tell me she was going to dinner, I got a little excited.”

“I can see that,” he responded, gesturing to the toys in her hands. 

“Huh?” She held them up and her eyes widened as if she’d forgotten she was holding them. “Oh, these! Yeah, I stopped at Walmart after my shift. I figured he needed something to commemorate his first evening with Aunt Lucy.”

Tim reached over to wiggle one of the octopus’s tentacles. “And you didn’t wanna just give him the koala instead of spending more money?”

Lucy made a face as if he’d just suggested killing the pope. “You think I’d regift Osborn? Absolutely not, he’s mine forever.”

The thought of Lucy coming home from a long day of crime-fighting to snuggle that ridiculous koala made Tim chuckle, but he figured she’d been waiting long enough to get to the point of the evening. “Well, Aunt Lucy,” he said, pointing his thumb over his shoulders. “Wanna go see if Jack likes maracas?”

Finally, her smile was as big as it was when she arrived. Tim watched her scurry over to the living room rug, where Jack was sitting up, surrounded by his own toys. “Hi, baby!” she greeted. “Oh, you’ve gotten so big!” She turned back to tell Tim, “I’ve gotta send Jackson a picture.”

Tim leaned against a nearby wall to watch her coo over the baby. “Side note: we agree that Angela named this kid after Jackson, right?”

“Oh, absolutely.”

“Okay, good, because I’ve known Angela for a decade and she’s never once told me about her ‘Uncle Jack who died in a car accident when she was in high school.’”

Lucy laughed, taking her phone out of her pocket to take pictures. 

“He’s not smiling,” she commented, still taking a few pictures anyway. Tim got a side profile view of her puffing out her cheeks and crossing her eyes in an attempt to make Jack laugh, to no avail. “Hm.” She picked up the maracas and shook them with a big smile, and he just looked around the room, deeming everything else more interesting. 

“Let me try,” Tim said, coming over from his position against the wall. Upon seeing Tim, the baby cooed. “Hey, little man.” He sat in front of him next to an observing Lucy. 

Jack stared at Tim before his lips blubbered, then turned into a gummy smile. 

“Ah, still no teeth? I thought I told you to grow some teeth last time I saw you, I don’t appreciate this slacking.”

Despite having no idea what Tim was saying, Jack broke out in a funny, loud laugh. 

“I’m not laughing with you, kid,” he said, smiling. “I had my heart set on seeing some teeth.”

He looked over to Lucy, who was smiling, but she could see something sad in her eyes. “Hey, he’s just not used to you yet,” he offered. “I’m here all the time, he’ll warm up eventually.”

Lucy seemed shocked that she’d been caught in her baby jealousy before she shook it off and nodded. “No, yeah, I get it. I’m not, like, mad that he likes you more or anything.”

Tim looked back to Jack, who was watching their short conversation like a tennis match. “Hey, little man, I think I’ve figured out how you can make it up to me for the teeth.”

Jack watched intently, seeming to understand the urgency of his request. The moment Tim knew he had his full attention, he blew a dry raspberry right in his face, eliciting a belly laugh that filled up the entire room with the sound.

He looked back and Lucy was giggling as well. “You better get your camera out,” he said.

Lucy had a new kind of excitement for the night as she took out her phone. “Ready?” Tim asked her, and she nodded, causing him to mimic the puffy cheeked, cross-eyed face she’d done. The baby giggled continuously, and Lucy snapped pictures like her life depended on it, making sure to get both his and Tim’s ridiculous faces. 

She shuffled behind Tim’s back to get a front angle of Jack, who stopped laughing as he tracked her movements, only to begin again once Tim blew another raspberry. She got Tim’s hand in the frame when Jack laughed so hard, he had begun to fall over, prompting Tim to catch him.

“Good dad instincts,” Lucy commented. “You’re a natural!”

“This is a clumsy kid, I can tell when he’s gonna fall a minute before he does.”

Lucy took a break from taking pictures to just watch Tim interact with his godson. The baby adored Tim, getting excited every time he reappeared after disappearing in peek-a-boo, blubbering when Tim complimented his patty cake skills, or making incoherent noises to try to copy Tim when he’d point to his right and say, “Lucy.”

Blubber.

“Lu. Cy.”

“Bah?”

“You’ll get there one day.”

Tim wasn’t lost on how much fun Lucy was having watching him, and he couldn’t say he wasn’t having fun being watched. 

“I’m gonna go to the bathroom real quick, you order us a pizza,” he commanded, getting up from his sitting position as she nodded in reply. 

As he was washing his hands, he heard loud crying, so he dried his hands quickly and hurried out, to find Jack in his original upright position, bawling in front of a distraught Lucy. “I don’t know what I did,” she said, hands reaching out to the baby, but not touching him. “I- I don’t know what I did!”

Tim ran over, picking the child up from the rug, propping him up on his hip. “It’s probably because I left.” When Jack registered where he now was, who he was with, the crying subsided, until he was just making small blubbers, then back to giggling. Tim looked up to see Lucy, no longer hiding her hurt that Jack didn’t like her, frowning deeply. “Lucy-”

“No, it’s okay, Tim, really,” she offered, nothing okay in her voice. “I- I’m here the least, I get that babies don’t like strangers.” She breathed, and he could see her breathing was doing nothing to neutralize her mood. “It’s just, I did all this… like, I know so much stuff about babies, but I’m never really around babies, so I never have an opportunity to test out all this knowledge, but it turns out, you can do all the studying in the world and it won’t mean a thing if the baby doesn’t even like you!” She huffed out a dry laugh at the end, crossing her arms and tapping her foot. 

Tim watched her work herself up throughout her rant, and when he looked down, Jack had been watching her with a similar focus. And then he giggled. At the sound, Lucy looked over sharply, face still frowning, but with hope in her eyes. 

“Do that again,” Tim said. 

“Do what?”

“That… frustrated huff you do.”

“I don’t…” Her sentence trailed off, instead ending in a fake version of her huff, which made the baby laugh harder. 

“I... I think he likes it when you’re mad.”

“There’s no way this works.” She straightened out her posture and gave an indignant pout, before huffing and stomping her foot. 

Jack shrieked, which turned into a laugh, loud as Tim had gotten. 

Lucy was elated, clapping her hands before they went over her mouth. She marched over to the two of them with her finger pointed into Jack’s face. “Listen here,” she said, booping his nose. “I don’t want any funny business from you tonight, you hear me? I mean it.”

“Aah!” he cried out, before pretending to hide in Tim’s shirt, then turning back to Lucy and giggling. 

“I think you’ve gotten him used to grumpy people,” she smiled. 

“I am not grumpy,” Tim defended. “At least not around little man.”

“Hm, I don’t know.” She tapped her chin before straightening her posture again and crossing her arms over her chest. “Alright, boot! What’s the code for an animal attack?! Get it wrong and you’re going 20 push-ups at every red light!”

Tim laughed almost as hard as the baby in his arms. “I did not sound like that.”

She leaned in close to the chubby face. “According to Jack, I nailed it.”

Once she straightened back up, Jack reached for her, tiny arms stretched out to her face. 

Tim heard Lucy’s gentle gasp when she noticed. “Do you… do you think he’ll let me…?”

“Let’s give it a try.” 

Tim crouched to transfer him onto Lucy’s hip, and she cautiously wrapped an arm behind his back. “Hi,” she greeted.

At first, Jack looked Lucy’s face over, but then he put his chunky hands on Lucy’s cheeks, babbling. Lucy’s smile looked big enough to break her face as his hands traveled to her hair, tugging lightly. 

“It’s cute at first. Then he starts to mean it,” Tim commented. 

“Tim, look,” Lucy whispered, knowing he already was. She leaned her forehead in to touch Jack’s, and the baby made a high-pitched noise before accepting her affection and continuing his exploration of her face.

It occurred to Tim that Lucy could probably keep Jack for herself and no one would suspect a thing. The curiosity in his big, brown eyes mirrored hers almost perfectly. Baby cheeks were generally pretty full, but Tim wondered if the sight of Jack’s cheeks taking up his whole face when he laughed would now be reminiscent of Lucy’s smile to him. His chest felt heavy at the sight of Lucy with a baby that looked like he could’ve been hers, only intensified by the immediate bond the two seemed to create. He was willing to bet that she was the closest thing to human sunshine Jack had met in his short life. Maybe that was why it was so funny to see her mad- because unless she was taking down a suspect or genuinely reading someone the riot act, Lucy couldn’t help but make the grumpiest babies, or grown men, laugh. 

In the end, Tim had to be the one to call for pizza, and he and Lucy ate while she and Jack continued to get to know each other. As she was telling him the story of the time she ran into Mommy and Uncle Tim wedding dress shopping, Jack started to put his little fist in his mouth. “Oo, he’s hungry,” she announced. 

Tim looked over from his spot on the couch next to her to verify. “There’s puree in the fridge. If you feed him banana, he will love you forever.”

She looked in the kitchen to see a bundle of browning bananas on the counter, then back to Tim, who already knew where her head was. “You wanna make baby food, don’t you?”

“I saw a highly recommended recipe.”

She made her recipe, taking turns with Tim to give it to Jack, burping him when feeding time was over. 

“Now it’s time for the hard part,” Tim announced. “Putting this little guy to sleep.”

They took Jack to the nursery, laying him in his crib, but he seemed to have no interest in sleeping, reaching up to Tim and Lucy and babbling. 

“No, buddy, playtime’s over,” Tim said gently, rocking the crib.

“What happens if we just leave?”

“He cries. So we just kinda stand here and wait, or rather, hope he falls asleep soon.”

Lucy thought for a moment, before tapping Tim on the arm. “I’ve got an idea.”

She returned from the bathroom moments later with a box of Kleenex. “Can you hold this?” 

Tim took the box, watching her take one tissue out. “What are you doing?”

“Just hold on.” She started to sweep the tissue over Jack’s face, gently running it from his eyes down to his chin. After a couple of sweeps, the baby snatched it out of her hands and started ripping it up, shoving bits into his mouth.

She could feel Tim’s judging stare as she retrieved the pieces. “Well, that worked.”

“Shut up,” she muttered. “Hold his arms?”

With one hand, Tim held his little arms over his chest as Lucy tried her trick again. At first, Jack fidgeted, giving little protesting babbles, but eventually, they quieted as they saw his eyelids getting heavy. 

“Not bad,” Tim said, and Lucy shushed him gently.

“Not ‘til he’s all the way asleep,” she said, continuing her motions. Finally, Jack’s arms relaxed in the large hand holding them, his breathing falling even.

“Okay, now… slowly,” Tim whispered, gently pulling Lucy’s arm back toward the hallway. Together, they made their way out of the nursery, taking a full ten seconds to shut the door behind them. 

Once they’d gained a safe distance from the room, Lucy turned to Tim. “Okay, now you can compliment my technique.”

“On what? Fishing for compliments?” he quipped back, making her roll her eyes. “But, seriously, which website did you learn that on? You should probably send it to Lopez.”

“Um, none, actually.” She made her way into the kitchen to plate another slice of pizza. “My mom used to do that to me as a baby and she still swears that’s the reason I sleep so well now.”

“Do you think it’s too late for an adult to try that?”

Her eyebrow quirked.

“Joking, it was a joke,” he said, making his way to grab a plate for himself. “It’s just been a little hard for me to fall asleep lately.”

Riding with Tim hadn’t been an everyday thing for a while, but she tried to think back to rides they had shared, going through things in their day that could contribute to his loss of sleep, which was… pretty much everything. “Have you been drinking coffee later in the day?”

“Not that I can think of? It’s nothing serious, I might just be a lighter sleeper now.” 

Leaving her food to microwave, she walked over and touched his neck from behind, causing him to tense up. “What are you doing?” he asked. 

She began to run her hand up the back of his neck in short, timed motions, stopping just where the fade of his hair began to get thicker. “This is supposed to help.”

He turned around, causing her hand to fall. “That’s not gonna work,” he chuckled and she shrugged. 

“Worth a shot.”

Once their food was hot, they made their way to the couch and searched for some boring Lifetime movie to watch while they ate. About 3o minutes in, Tim felt something touching the back of his neck again. He turned to see Lucy’s arm outstretched to him, though she kept her eyes on the screen. 

“I told you, that isn’t gonna work.”

“It takes longer than 10 seconds to work, Tim,” she snarked. 

He laughed and got comfortable as her hand continued its work. Even if it wouldn’t put him to sleep, it did feel kind of nice.

It didn’t take long for his eyelids to begin to get heavy and he found himself turning his face to hide a yawn. “You good over there?” she asked, craning her neck to see him.

“Completely fine.”

Soon, he found his head resting on the wooden frame along the back of the couch, keeping his neck above the pillows so Lucy could continue her ministrations without her hand being squished. 

“So, not that this is working because it isn’t,” he started, turning to see her smirk. “But is this something you can do by yourself?”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “It’s the same psychology as the tissue trick. Small, soothing motions that eventually just relax you to sleep. But it’s kinda like tickling yourself, it doesn’t really work if your body is fully aware of what it’s doing.”

He wanted to make a joke about her psychology talk being what was boring him to sleep, but he found he didn’t even have the energy for that. He’d get some back by just resting his eyes for a second. Just for a second…

The first thing he heard was the sound of a car pulling into the driveway. The first thing he felt was Lucy’s relaxed hand on the back of his neck. Lucy. He looked over to see her sleeping peacefully next to him. 

He’d seen her asleep on the job. He’d seen her choose a nap over food at lunchtime in the break room. He’d seen her asleep for just a second the morning after she’d slept on his couch, but his entrance had woken her up fairly quickly. 

This was different. This was a close-up view of the rise and fall of her chest, catching the twitches of her eyelids as she dreamed. This was watching a piece of loose hair that had fallen in front of her nose blowing out and coming back with the rhythm of her breathing. And he just wished Angela and Wesley wouldn’t unlock the front door so loudly. 

“Hey!” Angela greeted, stopping when she saw Lucy and changing her voice to a whisper. “Oop… hey.”

“You guys ordered pizza?” Wesley asked, seeing the open box in the kitchen.

“We didn’t wanna eat up your food.”

“Take it for lunch tomorrow,” Angela commanded. “We made it for you.”

“Thanks. Jack’s asleep in his crib, Lucy did some trick to knock him out.”

“Did you do that trick to her? She looks comatose.”

He snuck another look at her, catching another eye twitch, before turning back to the couple. “I’ll wake her up in a second so we can clean up. You guys turn in.”

“See you tomorrow.” He heard their footsteps behind the couch as they headed to their bedroom. 

He did not see Angela fist-bump her husband behind Tim’s back.

Lucy felt something warm on her bare arm, and her eyes cracked open to see Tim’s hand gently shaking her elbow. “Hey, Chen… Lucy,” he said, not yet seeing that she was awake. 

“Hi,” she whispered, straightening and stretching her free arm above her head. “I take it my sleep trick worked for you too, huh?”

With a gentle smile, he shook his head. “The movie we put on was boring.”

“Mmhm.”

“Angela and Wesley are already in bed, we gotta get going.”

Lucy frowned. “They already got home? I wanted to see them.”

“They wanted to let you sleep. You looked pretty cozy.”

She blushed. “Yeah, well… comfy couch.” It was then that she realized her hand was still secured behind his neck, and her thumb seemed to be stroking his short hair without her permission. She withdrew her hand quickly, balling it into a fist. “Woah, didn’t know muscle memory could get started that quickly.”

Tim stretched and stood up, heading to the kitchen. She followed closely behind, washing the used blender and putting the ingredients where she’d found them as Tim washed their pizza plates and boxed up the leftovers. 

“We have to take the food they made us for lunch tomorrow,” he said, breaking a comfortable silence. 

“I didn’t even get a good look at it.”

“Whatever it is, it’ll be good. Those two can cook.”

Finally, the kitchen was clean and all there was left to do was leave. Lucy was the first to go out into the chill of the night as Tim used the house key Angela gave him to lock up. 

“How did Angela call me to babysit when you’re the one with the key?” Lucy pondered, opening her camera roll.

“Her mind is a mystery no one can solve.” 

She held up her phone to show him a front-angle photo of Jack in the middle of his laugh during one of Tim’s games. “Awww,” she cooed.

“You better not have gotten my faces in those,” he replied.

“Pft, never.”

“Uh-huh.” Lucy could hear that he knew she was lying but chose to let it slide. “Sorry I didn’t get any pictures of you with him.”

“It’s okay, I’ll get some next time.” At his questioning face, she continued, “After tonight, you think I’m not doing this whenever I can? You’re gonna have to fight me for the gig next time they go out.”

“You’re on.” 

Soon, they were lingering outside her car door. “I’m… glad Angela and Wesley mixed up their babysitters,” Lucy said. 

Tim nodded in agreement. “We make a good team.”

She was again hit with the knowledge of how true that was. From serial killers to sleepy babies, there didn’t seem like a task in the world she and Tim couldn’t complete together. 

“Get some sleep.” She hoped the words would overpower the ill-timed nap they’d taken and somehow inspire his active brain to give him the sleep he deserved tonight. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Bright and early,” he replied, walking backward to his car. “Goodnight, Chen.”

Lucy’s drive home was a struggle to keep focused on the road. Half asleep, any energy her mind had was used to fire off images of Tim with crossed eyes, holding chubby baby legs in his hands. Her hand still tingled from the feeling of rubbing it through his short, coarse hair long after he’d fallen asleep so close to her shoulder. Sleep deprivation was giving her imagined images of Tim with a baby that looked just like him, smiled like him, threw its head back when it laughed like he did. And she thought that if the universe had any sense at all, it would one day let Tim raise someone with his goodness, so they could go on to spread it as well as he does. Tim would probably need help teaching them to spread it to the world because his reserved personality was so slow to show his inherent warmth to people. So her last wish was that their mother would be at least slightly more of an extrovert than their father. 

Chapter Text

Jackson felt slightly bad for what he was about to do, even if it was for Lucy’s own good. The group had one last chance to make this happen within the next century and it was all on him. He figured after three nights of bustling activity and one night of childcare, maybe what the two needed now was a quiet night where they could just talk. Somewhere Lucy loved, but calm for Tim. And a few days prior, Lucy happened to book two tickets to the perfect setting. He pulled out his phone to open his messages to his mother. 

“Need to cancel some plans tonight. Can you call me and make something up?”

A few moments later, his phone rang.

Lucy couldn’t hear the conversation, but she’d hoped that she was misinterpreting what she could hear. It sounded like Jackson’s mother, but she couldn’t make out the details. It seemed urgent, and despite Jackson’s protests and mentions of plans tonight, he eventually conceded to his mom before hanging up and remorsefully looking at Lucy from the passenger seat. 

“No,” she whined.

“I’m sorry. My cousin is passing through town and she’s only gonna be here for one night.”

“Booooo. Alright, well, I guess I can take Tamara.”

Jackson shook his head. “She’s at a friend’s house tonight. They’re studying for some big test tomorrow.”

“Ugh… well.… Do you think Tim would be interested?”

Angela was halfway through telling Tim about a case she’d just declared cold despite feeling like there was just “ something she was missing” when his phone rang. Upon seeing who it was, he excused himself from their lunch table to answer.

“Hey.”

“Hey!” she answered back, voice chipper so he knew nothing was wrong. “Are you busy?”

“Not for a few minutes. Why? What’s up?”

The other end was silent for a moment. “What are you doing tonight?”

He grinned to himself. “What did you have in mind?”

“Jackson and I were supposed to go to this harvest festival at a pumpkin patch together tonight but something just came up for him and Tamara can’t go either, so-”

“Wow,” he said dryly, cutting her off. “So I’m your last choice?”

He heard her laugh. “Tim, will you go to the harvest festival with me?”

“Yeah. Send me the details, I’ll meet you there.”

His smile lingered a few moments after they’d said their goodbyes. 

“Was that Lucy?” Angela asked when he sat back in his seat.

“Yeah,” he replied.

“I could tell.”

“She wanted me to go to this harvest festival thing with her tonight. Apparently, Jackson couldn’t make it.”

Angela’s eyebrows shot up for a moment like she knew something Tim didn’t before she took another bite of her salad. “I bet you’re excited,” she finally said.

“Eh, pumpkin patches aren’t really my thing. I don’t even know why she bothered to ask me.”

“Probably because you suck at saying no to her.”

He took a sip of his soft drink and bit his straw to avoid answering, figuring she was probably right.

As he drank, Angela pushed her food aside and leaned over her half of the table, hands clasping in front of her. 

“What’s with the interrogation stance?” Tim asked her.

“I don’t think you’ll ever get out of your comfort zone unless you’re forcibly removed, so I’m gonna ask you a straight-up question, and I need you to be honest with me.”

He gave her a questioning look, but nodded, putting his drink aside to listen.

“Do you have feelings for Lucy?”

Tim was sure he’d heard her wrong. “Excuse me?”

“Do you, Tim Bradford, have romantic feelings for Lucy Chen?”

He gave a dry laugh. “You’re kidding, right? I’m her sergeant.”

“I didn’t ask your title, I asked about your romantic feelings for her.”

Tim felt his face heating up and couldn’t discern from what. “I’ve been her superior the entire time I’ve known her, what kind of guy do you take me for?”

“Shockingly enough, none of these are answers to my question.”

Tim scoffed. “This is ridiculous. No, Angela, I am not harboring romantic feelings for Chen.”

Angela squinted her eyes at him, but for someone asking such a leading question, there seemed to be no surprise at his answer. Finally, she leaned back in her chair with a shrug. “Okay,” she said, retrieving her food.

“Okay?”

She nodded. “If you insist on thinking too much, that’s up to you. But the day you stop using your head and just allow yourself to feel around her, I think you’ll be surprised.”

Tim grabbed his waiting drink to take another sip. “If you say so.”

Tim had no intentions of backing out of the plans he’d made with Lucy. Why would he need to? He wasn’t some lovesick teenager, pining after his subordinate like a lost puppy. He was comfortable with her, but they were friends, he was allowed to have friends.

Which Angela very well knew. In the years he’d known her, she’d been aware of how distinctly female his social circle tended to be, and this had never come up. So what was it about his friendship with Lucy that made Angela suddenly lose her mind?

Before he could think of an answer, Lucy’s car pulled up across the parking lot and his posture straightened. He’d never been lost on the fact that his heart momentarily sped up at the sight of Lucy in casual dress. As she came closer into view, dressed in skinny jeans and finally wearing her favorite sweater to an appropriate venue, Tim rationalized that Lucy was just a beautiful woman. She’d have this heart-speeding effect on anyone. Tim was friends with beautiful women like Angela and Nyla with no issues. Then again, he couldn’t remember a single outfit of theirs that had stood out to him.

“Ready?” she said, holding their tickets up and gently waving them. 

He mustered up a smile, gesturing to the entrance. “Lead the way.”

Get it together, Bradford. 

It didn’t take being attached to Lucy at the hip to know how much she loved the fall season. Everyone at the station who she considered a friend, from Grey to Smitty, had taken home a Tupperware of one of her fall soups at some point or another. Once, on a lunch break, she’d shown Tim a picture of every Halloween costume she’d donned since her freshman year of college. But Lucy surrounded by fall was… a lot.

She’d made Tim smell every soap being sold until he was certain he’d be smelling pumpkin for the rest of the year. She’d proudly shown off her wad of $5 bills so she could bring home at least one of every pastry. 

“You hate raisins,” he said, watching her shove a plastic-wrapped trio of oatmeal raisin cookies into her brand new handwoven tote bag. 

“But Tamara doesn’t,” she replied simply. “I’m not eating all of this myself.”

She proved this by badgering him until he let her buy him something as thanks for coming with her. He landed on a cinnamon bun, and she bought two so she could try one as well. 

As they walked, they passed the exit to a corn maze that began on the other side of the pumpkin patch. Lucy stood on her tiptoes as if attempting to see over the tall stalks would give her a leg up if she’d tried it. He assumed that was what she wanted, to try the maze, but she looked over at him and continued walking, seemingly concluding that her company wouldn’t be interested. 

He watched her as she came back to the table they’d saved with two small soft pretzels. “They didn’t have pizza,” she explained. “So I got you a classic.”

He took his salted pretzel, smiling at her obvious choice of cinnamon sugar. 

“What’s up with you today?” she asked, directing his eyes back to hers.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve been quiet since we got here. And it feels like you’re, like… watching me. More than usual. It feels weird.”

The truth was, Angela had picked the wrong day to ask her invasive question, because now, Tim was analyzing every reaction to Lucy that he’d been brushing off. Every hitch in his breath when she smiled, every flip of his chest when she laughed, every glare he’d been automatically shooting any guy he caught ogling her. Every story of hers that would be so boring to him if he didn’t find her such an interesting storyteller. Every time the warmth of her touch would stay on his skin long after she’d removed her hand. And all the while, Angela’s question played in his head on a loop.

“Do you have feelings for Lucy?” 

And after his brain had had enough of Angela’s voice, it began to morph into others. 

“Is there something going on between you and Lucy?” It was Genny, the day he had renovated with her alone, after this father had broken his heart one last time and Lucy was there to hold the pieces together. 

“Do you have feelings for her?” It was Ashley, the night they ended things and he knew who she was talking about without her having to say a name. 

“I think the reason why you’re so protective of me… is because you have feelings for me too?” It was Lucy, at a time that felt like a lifetime ago to Tim now, pulling a prank that he hadn’t been able to get out of his head for days after she did it. 

And it was throwing him off. 

“I’m fine,” he finally replied. “It’s just been a long week.”

“Are you okay?” she asked with such concern in her voice, it gave Tim another chest flip to analyze. “Do we need to call it early?”

“No,” he said, giving her a soft smile. “I’m sorry. Let’s keep going, and if my quiet is weirding you out, I’d be happy to make fun of your ridiculous spending tonight.”

She returned his smile, satisfied. “Deal.”

Things got easier after that, and they slowly, but surely, fell back into their natural rhythm. They traded patrol stories at the sight of random things that jogged memories of them. Lucy helped Tim pick out fresh produce to take home, berating him to eat more vegetables. It was natural, back in Tim’s comfort zone after he’d decided his analysis could wait until later… or never. 

“Hey,” Tim said once they’d made their way to the other side of the festival. “Wanna try the corn maze?”

Despite her questioning expression, Tim could see the excitement in her eyes. “Are you sure? You’re volunteering to get lost, that’s fairly un-Timlike.”

“Which is why this is the one and only time I’ll ever offer this.”

That seemed to convince her as she did a little excited bounce before heading to the entrance. 

“How many?” the bored attendant asked in a monotone. 

“Uh, two, please?” Lucy replied. 

She was handed a large cowbell. “Don’t split up, we’re running low on bells. Watch out for the mud, some areas of the maze are gonna be freshly watered. If you get super lost or there’s an emergency, ring the bell, and someone will be out to get you out of the maze.”

“Uh… thanks?”

Lucy was right, this was particularly “un-Timlike” of him, and after a few minutes of seeing nothing but the back of her head and green and yellow stalks, taller than him, in every direction and too dense to see through, he began to regret it. So he did what he’d gotten used to when he got nervous, he put a hand on Lucy’s back to keep her close.

“Nervous?” she asked. Of course she would know that already.

“A little. Did the guy mention how long it should take for us to get out of here?”

“These are different for everybody, but we can probably make it out of here in under 15 minutes.” She looked back at him to gauge. “Unless you need to ring the bell? No shame, I’ll even say it’s for me.”

He smiled, stepping closer so his torso was almost touching her back. “Thanks, I’m okay. But I am never doing this again.”

She giggled. “Noted.”

They walked a couple more minutes, hitting dead ends, being passed by cocky teenagers who Lucy had commented would be stuck in the maze for an hour at least, before they hit the scarecrow that meant they were in the dead center. 

“Halfway there!” she announced. “How are we feeling?”

“I’m okay, and you are enjoying this way too much.”

“That’s fair. C’mon, let’s get out of here.”

“Why do you like this kinda stuff so much?” he asked once all he could see in any direction was green again. 

“I don’t know, puzzles are fun! Especially immersive ones like this, they’re very stimulating.”

“Do you not get enough mental stimulation at work?”

“You can never have-”

Tim would never know how that sentence was going to end, because Lucy’s entire body disappeared into the stalks to their right, except her calves laid out in the walkway. “Lucy!” he called, immediately pushing past the corn to retrieve her. “Are you okay?”

She pushed herself to her knees and shook her hair out of her face before simply stating, “Mud.”

He began to laugh once he was sure she was alright, and she joined him, standing to her feet and brushing the dirt off her tote bag. “At least the pastries survived,” he offered.

“Yeah, but my outfit didn’t.” She began roughly swatting mud off of the sleeves of her sweater. 

“It’ll wash out. Can’t say the same about your hair, though.”

“Ha ha. Come help me,” she ordered, moving her swatting down to her thighs. As her head was turned down, he came to begin to pick the mess out of her hair. “How does this keep happening when we hang out?”

“No one can look good all the time, Luce.”

She paused for a moment, before brushing her backside. “‘Luce.’ I like that.”

“Hold on, you have a little….” He gently took her chin between his thumb and index finger, turning her to face him. 

Her eyes. She was so close. And they were so brown. A lighter, warmer brown than the dirt on her cheek, which he reminded himself was the entire reason he was touching her face in the first place. He didn’t miss the hitch in her breath when his thumb moved to her cheek to wipe it, and the sound of Lucy reacting to his touch in any capacity was enough to set his skin on fire. 

In the entire time he’d spent analyzing Angela’s words, he hadn’t given any thought to her actual advice until this moment. Because Lucy was here. Not Officer Chen, not Boot, just Lucy. And he was touching her with both hands, his left wrapped around her wrist without him even knowing how or when it got there. But he didn’t care.

Because she was here. Not moving either hand. Staring back at him with her big, brown eyes. So for the first time since meeting her, he stopped thinking. 

He just felt.

The past couple of times, Lucy had blamed it on something else. The night at the club, it was the alcohol. The night they babysat, it was that Tim was playing with a baby and every man looks hot when being good with kids. The night Lucy’s friend had passed and Tim lingered after hugging her, it was grief and the urge to be close to somebody while going through heartbreak. But now, there was nothing to blame as Lucy’s stomach filled with so many butterflies, keeping still was an actual effort. But Tim’s thumb had stopped swiping away mud from her face long ago and was now just moving down the smooth skin of her cheek to her lip, where she was sure she hadn’t felt any mud. He outlined the bottom of her lip with his thumb, never breaking eye contact. And his eyes. She’d been so used to getting glimpses before he’d turn away, or their beauty would be dulled by the steel in his gaze. But now, she was free, if not requested, to take them in. Blue, in the sun, staring at her in a way she’d never seen him look at a woman. Not Isabel, not Rachel, definitely not Ashley, not even Lucy herself before now. 

Maybe all she wanted was a closer look.

She rose to her toes, lowering her stare to his lips. When she was only an inch away, those lips pressed into a hard line before turning away entirely. 

Oh, my God. 

She sank back onto her feet as Tim cleared his throat.

Oh, my God, oh my God. 

Her mind sounded a million alarms as he removed his hands from her, shoving them back into his pockets. “Um, Lucy, I…”

“No, it’s fine, I just-”

“No, it’s my fault, I-”

“I thought I saw something, so I just…”

In other circumstances, the two of them fumbling over their words would’ve made them laugh, but they both knew what had just happened. And it was no laughing matter.

She stepped back to gain space, far enough that he couldn’t reach her. “I should probably get home anyway. Outfit’s ruined and all that.”

“Lucy-”

“Can we please just… get this over with?”

He heard the plea in her voice, and his shoulders dropped as he nodded.

Every cell in Lucy’s body was screaming at her to ring the damn bell and pray to God two rescuers came to take them to directionally opposite emergency exits, but she figured she’d save herself the embarrassment of calling for help two minutes away from the end. She had about one remaining strand of dignity to take her through the evening, and by heaven, she was going to keep it. 

Finally, they made it out of the maze and Lucy took advantage of no longer being required to stay together, walking so far from him a van could’ve driven between them without losing a mirror. There was no lingering when they made it to her car, Tim standing so far, you’d assume the car was plagued. 

“I’ll see you at work,” he said, hitting Lucy with a new wave of nausea. 

She didn’t just try to kiss Tim, she tried to kiss her superior. Her sergeant. 

“Yeah,” she replied, getting in her car. “Night.”

When he was clear across the parking lot, she peeled off, needing to be home within ten minutes even though she lived 15 minutes away. 

“Stupid, stupid, stupid!” she yelled once she hit the freeway, smacking her steering wheel until her hand hurt. Hot tears welled in her eyes as she replayed Tim’s face in her mind. He was mortified. How could she even think he’d kiss her? 

And why in hell had she tried to kiss him anyway? They were friends, colleagues. They had a good relationship, why would Lucy feel the need to go and ruin it? It was so unlike her to do something so rash as to give into a fleeting thought to kiss one of her best friends.

But what if it wasn’t fleeting?

How many times could you have the same thoughts before they weren’t considered fleeting anymore? Because despite her coming up with reasons every time Tim left her chest feeling hot, she couldn’t change the fact that he did. In every scenario, the common denominator was him, and it was only a matter of time before it was just the two of them with no distractions and not an excuse to be found.

The realization hit Lucy like a truck: she tried to kiss Tim because she wanted to kiss Tim. 

She wanted Tim.

She had for a long time. 

And he didn’t feel the same.

“DAMN IT!”

Chapter Text

The day after, Jackson assumed Lucy was being so professional around Tim in an attempt to keep their new relationship secret, so he spent the first half of the day trying to pry. His final attempt came when he’d caught Tim peering at them from the food truck next to theirs and nudged Lucy. 

“Maybe he wants you to say hi,” he teased.

Lucy looked over to see Tim, before turning back to Jackson, the melancholy in her eyes turned to pure venom. “Seriously, Jackson, will you drop it?!” she spat. “The nagging isn’t cute or funny, it’s just annoying!”

She’d apologized shortly after, blaming fatigue, but he knew better. Lucy wouldn’t snap at him like that unless something major was bothering her. 

After two more days of waiting, she still hadn’t spilled the beans, and things somehow seemed even more awkward when Tim was around. To make matters worse, she’d only expressed interest in continuing to ride with Jackson, when usually by now, she’d itching to be the sergeant’s aide for the day. 

By day five, the bet, the gossip, the group’s growing impatience all felt inconsequential. His friend had been down all week, seemingly in connection to one of the most important people in her life. He asked what was wrong in earnest, and her only reply was, “Nothing, Jackson, it’s fine”. 

The next day, when roll call began with Tim and Lucy still positioned as far as the briefing room would allow them, Jackson figured his date might have royally messed things up. 

A full week after the harvest festival, Lucy finally had the day off. 

She’d spent every day going down her proactive list to get over someone. She kept busy, visiting friends she hadn’t seen in months if only to get out of the house. Even after Jackson had annoyed her, she stuck by him and Tamara as much of the day as she could, finding comfort in how valued they made her feel. She reinvented her full-body workout to shake things up for herself. She bounced back and forth between two self-help books, almost finishing one of them. She did everything she was supposed to- tried and true methods that had gotten her through every breakup or rejection in her adult life. All the while, the thought nagged that these things always got her over men she never loved, and now, none were making a dent. 

That could only mean one thing, which she did not have the energy to fully admit to herself yet.

So her day off was spent giving proactivity a break. She remained in the same tee shirt and sweatpants that she’d slept in the night before, cracked open a quart of cookie dough ice cream, and planned a day of romantic comedies, promising herself she’d end on Someone Great for a shot of female independence. Balance. Lucy also promised herself she’d stop after only one bottle of wine that she’d pace throughout the day. 

During a mild cleaning break, her “you don’t need him” Spotify playlist was interrupted by an incoming phone call. When she came over to answer, her heart clenched. Why was Tim calling her? The interruption to her music was shortened by her rejecting his call. If it was an emergency, he would call again. 

He didn’t, but she did stare at her phone long enough to see a text from him.

“We should probably talk about what happened.”

Lucy laughed at the irony that this was when he would want to communicate. She shook her head and resumed her cleaning. Not on my day off. 

In the evening, she was halfway into a scene of Sandra Bullock twerking around a campfire with Betty White, tipping her trustee wine bottle over her tongue and hoping for one last drop, when there was a knock at the door. 

If this was a rom-com, that would be Tim with flowers and a boombox over his head, proclaiming his undying love for her, but of course, life wasn’t a rom-com. She still redid her messy ponytail to greet whoever was at the door.

It was Tamara. “Sorry, study night ran late,” she explained. “I forgot my key this morning.”

Lucy nodded, opening wider. “It’s fine.”

“Also, Tim’s here to see you? He was outside, so I got us buzzed in.”

Lucy’s ears grew hot. “Tim’s here?” She leaned out of the doorway past Tamara and yep, there he was, standing halfway down the hall and looking at her expectantly. She couldn’t even get mad at Tamara for letting him in, but she made a mental note to talk to her about texting beforehand next time. She turned back to Tamara and asked, “Would you mind waiting in Jackson’s room? This shouldn’t take long.”

Tamara nodded, moving past Lucy to give the two some space. Lucy stepped back from the entrance, her breath growing shallow as she heard Tim’s footsteps approaching until he came into view, up close for the first time in a week. Out of habit, she analyzed his appearance. He looked a little drained, his tired eyes scanning her as she was doing to him. Almost as if he’d missed her. Like not having access to her had taken a toll. 

“Hi,” she breathed, taking one last tiny step backward. 

“Hey,” he said. “Can we talk?”

“About what?”

“You know what.”

“We don’t need to talk about that.”

He sighed and gently shook his head. “You don’t even know what I’m gonna say.”

“There’s nothing to say. I’m squared away, you’re obviously squared away, Jackson’s gonna be home any minute and I don’t want him to ask questions, so…”

He folded his arms at her indignance, and the authoritative pose made Lucy want to scream. He did not get to come to her apartment out of uniform and act like he had any jurisdiction over her life here. “First off, West got held up at the station. I don’t know for how long, but I know I have time.”

She knew that, but she’d hoped he wouldn’t. 

“Second,” he continued, taking a step towards her without entering the doorway. “I think it’s fairly obvious that neither of us is exactly squared away. You won’t look at me, you won’t talk to me unless it’s work related.”

“I feel like needing some time is fair,” she responded, casting her eyes to the floor. “Let me get over the embarrassment of what happened and we can go back to the way it was, okay? Like none of this ever happened.”

She watched as he took another step, the toe of his boots barely inching over the threshold. “What if I don’t want to go back to the way it was? What if the way it was isn’t good enough for me anymore?”

She looked up from her slippers to meet his eyes.

“What would you say to that?”

She blinked a few times before answering. “I need some elaboration before I can answer.”

“Can I come in?”

Lucy looked behind her at the state of her apartment and wished he hadn’t come over the day she hit full breakup mode. Nevertheless, she stood aside, grateful when he came in just enough to close the door behind him before leaning his back against it. She kept her distance, deeming herself clearly incapable of invading his space. 

“When we met, I didn’t have to constantly remind myself to stop seeing you in a certain way. You were my rookie, I was your training officer. That was it. Watching you walk to your car a little too long, or pulling out all the stops to cheer you up on a bad day… those little things didn’t matter in the grand scheme, so I wasn’t worried about it. I got comfortable with you, more comfortable than I’ve felt with anyone. Anyone.” He paused, giving Lucy time to digest that Tim trusted her to know him in his purest form. No boundaries, no walls. Not for her. 

“We fell into a rhythm,” he continued. “We functioned as a unit. And it’s normal to find a friend attractive, so I’d accepted that having you so ingrained in my life meant hearing you laugh and turning to watch, or forgetting my sentence when you were a little too dressed up.” Lucy blushed, remembering the hungry look in his eyes at the club, or further back, the day his expression gave away how good she looked in green. “If someone asked about us, I was just your superior, and it was recently brought to my attention that that’s not a real answer. I got some advice to stop rationalizing, to get out of my comfort zone for two seconds. To let myself feel what I’ve felt for you like it was the first time.” He searched her eyes. “And when it seemed like you felt the same, I panicked, because that would change everything. Not just my career and yours, but the one relationship I was relaxed in, that I was sure wasn’t going anywhere. But I’m here because… I’m not scared anymore. And the leftover fear I do have, I want to get over it with you. This might be the one change I can get uncomfortable for.”

Lucy’s throat was dry and she was pretty sure her legs had turned to jello, so she allowed herself one bounce on her toes to return their strength. “What did you feel?” He gave a questioning look, so she took in a shaky breath to elaborate. “When you don’t think so much, what feeling is there?” 

He smiled softly, studying her pajama-clad form from head to toe. “I think at the base of it, I just want you close to me. All the time.”

Her breath was shaky as she asked, “How close?”

He finally unglued himself from the door to move toward her, and she stepped forward to meet him halfway. Soon, her eyes were closed, allowing her to take in the feeling of his strong arms wrapped around her waist, squeezing as he pulled her impossibly closer. Her fingertips traced the laugh lines in his freshly shaved cheeks before moving down to his lips, stretched from the size of his smile. His breath on her face and the warmth of his forehead pressed against hers. There were no colorful lights, no cheers from a stadium, and she was in sweatpants instead of a velvet dress, but somehow, this felt like the most Tim and Lucy way to share this moment. They just stood for a while, holding each other, not for the first time, but for the first time like this, neither quite believing it was happening. 

“Is this better?” Lucy broke the silence by whispering, opening her eyes to find he’d been watching her the whole time. 

“Almost,” he whispered, leaning forward to close the gap.

Romantic comedies didn’t get it right. How could they? They only had an hour and a half to define love. They didn’t have years for the characters to get to know each other to the point their bodies would click together like puzzle pieces. They didn’t have months of unknowing yearning, all worth it when she discovered the meaning of life was to be this close to Tim Bradford as long as humanly possible. To hold back a whine when he came up for air, because how dare he stop kissing her for anything less than a kitchen fire? 

When she caught her breath, she opened her eyes to find his blue ones staring at her kiss-swollen lips before meeting her gaze. “Hey, Lucy?” he asked.

“Yeah?”

“Is it too soon to tell you I love you?”

Before she had a proper chance to respond, he was kissing her again, and she was left wondering how she hadn’t skyrocketed into the ceiling yet.

He loved her. He loved her. And he had for months. Lingering stares, lasting handshakes, smiles that grew despite visible efforts to keep them contained. Abruptly leaving her in his living room after she could’ve sworn she’d caught him glancing at her lips. It was all because he had been in love with her and didn’t know what to do with it. She could relate because she was also boiling over with too much love to know what to do with. All she knew to do was whisper it against his lips and accept that the simple words would always feel like an understatement. 

“What did you say?” he asked, breaking the kiss to look at her. 

“I said I love you, Tim,” she said again, louder this time. “I love you.”

With a smile, he placed a small peck to her mouth before resting his forehead against hers again. “I heard you the first time.”

“I’ve loved you so long, I got used to it.”

He backed up to look at her again, waiting for her to continue. She didn’t know how he got through his entire speech, because now that it was her turn, her heart was pounding despite knowing he reciprocated. At least she had his arms around her to keep her afloat if needed.

“Since meeting you, no matter how I felt about you… whether healthy respect or vague dislike, I knew that I could always look over my shoulder and find you there to back me up.” 

He nodded, reconfirming that promise. 

“I mean, when I was literally lost, I knew I could depend on you to bring me back home. And even before I was back here, I knew I was home because you were there. And that’s how it’s always been for me. Home hasn’t been my apartment, it’s been you, anywhere we are. It’s been the shop, the station, it’s been the sidewalk outside a bakery. But when you’re home, you don’t always register it, you just know you’re where you feel taken care of. And I think I got used to you taking care of me. Now, I get to take care of you, too.”

Tim’s face was worth the fear of being so open with him. It was the face of knowing he’d also found his home. 

“Can I kiss you again now?” he said after a moment.

Instead of answering, she pushed back up to her toes to bring herself to him. Despite everything that had been said, Lucy pulled him closer, almost afraid that this moment wasn’t real. Like if the grip of her hand in his hair, or her arm around his waist, faltered for even a second, he’d fade away and this would all prove to be some self-indulgent couch dream. Being in love was weird.

When Tim broke away, he gently pulled her scrunchie out so he could run his fingers through the ends of her loose hair. “You wanna get out of here?” 

“PLEASE!” echoed from Jackson’s room, causing them both to laugh quietly.

“She’s trying to study, so that’s probably a good idea. Plus, I actually do need a minute before I tell Jackson!” She’d raised her voice for Tamara to hear the last sentence, hopefully pausing whatever text she was probably in the midst of sending their other roommate. 

Lucy feared Tim would feel like she was hiding him, but he nodded in understanding. 

“Give me a second to change?”

“Why?” he said, twirling a lock of hair behind her back. “I think you look fine like this.”

She swatted his chest and turned out of his grip, instantly regretting leaving. Once in her bedroom, she changed at the speed of light, swiping on some mascara and lip gloss, brushing her hair out of the mess Tim somehow liked. 

When done, she all but ran back into his arms, kissing him in earnest and breaking before they could get carried away again. 

His fingers interlaced with hers, a whole new sensation to get used to.“You ready?” 

She was talking about much more than just the night ahead as she replied, “Absolutely.” 

Chapter Text

Lucy made her way into the precinct break room to get her morning coffee and stopped when she saw Tim at the far side of the counter preparing his own. 

“Sergeant Bradford,” she greeted.

He turned, and she felt his eyes tracking her as she made her way to the opposite end. Finally, he looked back to his cup as she grabbed one for herself. “Officer Chen.”

They worked in silence, passing things they knew would be needed for the other’s drink without having to be asked, like they’d done it a hundred times. In fairness, it was probably more. 

“How was your morning?” he asked, cutting the silence. 

She pursed her lips to hold back a smile. He knew exactly how her morning was. “It was alright. Didn’t get much sleep last night, though.”

“Hm. Something keep you up?”

“You could say that.” She pointed in his general direction and he slid two non-dairy french vanilla creamer singles her way. “Thanks.”

“Well, whatever keeps you up at night, you should probably keep it in check. A good night's sleep makes you feel energized and alert.” 

She rolled her eyes. Repeating her sleep tips word for word was not going to get a smile out of her at work, it just wasn’t. “I have other ways to stay on my toes, thank you.”

“That’s good to hear. Well, you have a good shift.”

“You as well. Be safe.”

She heard his footsteps making their way in her direction, stopping behind her. Not here, she thought. But also, exactly here. She felt a hand on the small of her back that earned the smile from her she knew he’d been awaiting. 

“Keep your schedule clear for tonight,” he ordered in a quiet voice.

“For what?” she replied without looking back at him, still stirring her coffee despite it being finished. 

“Haven’t decided yet.”

Was he trying to plan… spontaneity?

Before she could respond, he was gone, knowing the answer was yes without her having to say it. When she turned back, she saw the reason for his abrupt leave: Jackson had just arrived. 

“Ready?” he greeted, chipper as ever.

She secured the lid on her cup. “Let’s go!”

Lucy had spent the past week trying to conceal how deliriously happy she was, still halfway convinced that last night, the night before that, and the night before that had all been long dreams. She thanked her recent history of constant socializing for allowing her to believably tell Jackson she was with friends every night and sometimes sleeping over, when in reality, she was spending every single night at Tim’s house. Eating, cuddling, watching movies, remembering what it was like to live with Kojo, all between possibly too many rounds of sex. Making up for lost time was a chore she was happy to take on. 

“Hey, did you still wanna check out Solo Mío?” Jackson asked, startling her thoughts. 

She stopped staring out the window to look at the driver’s seat. “Hm?”

“That place on the Boulevard we’ve been meaning to check out? That guy I was telling you about wants to go eat there, but I told him I promised you we’d go first so would you mind third-wheeling?”

“I mean, I don’t have to third-wheel,” she said, pretending to check her nails. “I could just take Tim, it could be, like, a double date situation.”

Despite how nonchalant she tried to keep her voice, Jackson looked like he was about to crash the shop as her words sunk in. “WHAT?!” he yelled. 

Lucy had no choice but to drop the indifferent act, nodding her head at lightning speed. “It’s only been for the past week but it’s been amazing! We’re keeping it quiet, but Grey and IA know, so we’re in the clear!”

“Wait, Grey knows already?! Tell me everything! When did it happen? Was it while babysitting? Was it on my date? Was it-”

Jackson cut himself off as Lucy’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean ‘your date’?”

“Don’t worry about that, you were talking about your brand new cupcake phase with one of your favorite people, tell me about that!”

She folded her arms, tapping her bicep at an increasing rhythm. “Jackson…”

“Okay, in my defense, you sprung this on me. I cannot be held responsible for what flies out when I’m in shock.”

She continued to stare until he finished stalling. 

“Also… there may have been a bet.”

Lucy bugged her eyes out. “A bet?”

Jackson cringed as he prepared to explain. “Yeah… a bet to see who could trick you two into going on a date that would finally get you together. We had a gag order too, you weren’t ever supposed to find out.”

Lucy thought back to how random it felt for Nolan to suggest bringing Tim to the carnival, or Grey’s valuable Rams tickets that he just gave Tim free and clear instead of selling them. She also wondered how they’d apparently been so obvious to everyone else that a bet like that could be made, without having any clue themselves. 

“It was for your own good, I swear,” Jackson continued, growing nervous from her silence. “Y’all were on track to be flirting at the front of the briefing room until the Earth dies.”

“Who all was involved?”

“Pretty much everyone you think.”

A chill ran through her. “Smitty?”

“Oh god, not Smitty. I actually do love you, you know.”

“So… the night we went clubbing? Was that…”

He nodded. “That was Nyla’s turn, but we all ended up having a lot of fun, so it was kind of a win-win. You guys also gave Angela an excuse for a much-needed date night.”

Lucy snapped her fingers, before rapidly tapping his bicep. “I knew a lawyer and a detective weren’t getting their babysitters mixed up!”

Jackson took her enthusiastic reply as permission to laugh. “So you’re not mad?” he asked.

She shook her head, leaning back in her seat. “No, as long as Smitty wasn’t involved, I’m not mad. Can I ask you one question, though?”

He nodded. 

“What was the prize for the winner? Whoever’s date got us together or whatever?”

He clearly still had some residual shame when answering, “50 bucks from each of the losers.”

“So… $200? If there were five of you betting and only one winner, that’s 2oo, right?”

He nodded again.

“I’ll make you a deal. I’ll let you tell them and only them that you won….” She watched his eyebrows rise in interest before continuing, “If you give me the $200 after.”

“What?! Why do you get the money?!” 

“We put on a good show for you all, we at least deserve for you to buy us dinner, right?” She could see he was about to protest, so she added, “Or I can tell everyone that not only did you immediately break your gag order, but you bailing on the harvest festival ended up being the reason Tim and I didn’t talk for a week. My way, at least you get bragging rights! The choice is yours.”

Jackson groaned, knowing the choice was, in fact, not his. “Fine. Fine, I’ll take the bragging rights.”

Lucy beamed. “Pleasure doing business with you. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

She took out her phone and opened her texts to Tim, smiling at the selfie she’d recently taken kissing his cheek and sent that morning.

“I figured out what we’re doing tonight,” she typed. “Look fancy. We’re going on our first real date.”